Please join the CMCS Blackness & Publicness Working Group’s final event on Friday, April 30th, from 12-2pm: Dr. Jonathan M. Square’s lecture “Envisioning the Afric-American Picture Gallery.”
Dr. Square will discuss Black activist and educator William J. Wilson’s Afric-American Picture Gallery, an 1859 series of sketches, paintings, and sculptures that represent Black life in the United States and the broader African Diaspora. Drawing from real-world sources as well as works wholly imagined by Wilson, the hybrid text exhibits not only what the first gallery of Black art in the United States might look like, but also how a Black and white public might respond to the gallery and its holdings. The series is the basis for an exhibition that Dr. Square, whose multidisciplinary scholarship focuses on fashion, slavery, and justice within and beyond museums, is organizing in 2024.
Email Dr. Jennifer Van Horn (jvanhorn@udel.edu) for Zoom info & readings.
