Amending History
Art museums responsibility in representation and diversity in art
From the day most American children reach elementary school, they are taught history. In my case they began teaching us the presidents, the historical war heroes, and the inventors of the past. For a couple of classes in February (for black history month), We’d speak about Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King. Most of my education about my race was something taught at home and a lot of the resources and movies at the time, only showed us in a specific light. I only ever saw Native Americans on television in cartoons and old westerns, fighting cowboys, depicted in a stereotypical fashion. As I grew older, My history teachers changed a lot. They spoke more about the history of the oppressed and the silenced. Stories I hadn’t originally been told or exposed to. We visited museums rich with artifacts and historical wear and it was fascinating. As a new yorker I was thankfully introduced to a myriad of cultures and creeds. But the museum’s art didn’t reflect what I had been told was “the great American melting pot”. It didn’t show the lives of anyone but the elite and in power. Battles won and great heroes. But maybe these people aren’t what we made them out to be. Maybe the story is only being told through one point of view. What if museums opened their halls to include the views of the people who existed alongside these people and build a different narrative? What if we amended history to show a clearer picture through representation?
“It wasn’t just whites who experienced time, yet visual culture remains largely unchanged and questionable representations of the past are kept on display”- Jason Stanley
Throughout the years, museums have tried to diversify their collections (mostly through deaccessioning) to deal with their representation problem. As of now most collections still only contain a handful of non-male and non-white artists. This is not new and has been something that museums have been struggling with for a while. Many think this has to do with the lack of diversity within the curatorial staff. In an Article by Marian Carpenter, she cites a study by the Andrew Mellon foundation about this very problem. According to the 2018 Art Museum Staff Demographic Report, produced by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and Ithaka S+R, the number of employed curators who are people of color is 16%, compared to 84% of curators who identify as white. Signifying that a big part of the problem may be with who is picking the art that gets added to these collections. In another study done by artist and data journalist Mona Chalabi, She focused on 18 of the most well-known museums in the United States. It shows that these collections still have a long way to go in terms of diversity. According to an article by Hakim Bashara’ The study found that 85.4% of the works in the collections of all major US museums belong to white artists, and 87.4% are by men. African American artists have the lowest share with just 1.2% of the works; Asian artists total at 9%; and Hispanic and Latino artists constitute only 2.8% of the artists.’ Apparently, art museums have been more focused on diversifying their staff than their collections.
“It is not enough to rename our buildings, tear down statues and deaccession the relics of our flawed past. It’s simply not enough” -Titus Kaphar
In this exhibition we will be exploring works about reconstructing accepted historical narratives in art and the three artist’s that are paving the way to that change. The three artists I will be featuring are Titus Kaphar, Kehinde Wiley and Kent Monkman. All three are North American artists from black or indigenous backgrounds, who are reshaping the narrative, not to erase the history that is there but to amend what is depicted in these institutions of learning to give its viewers a better understanding of the time and allow them to reflect on a deeper level than possible before. These artists are also starting conversations about perceived victimhood, power, and legacy in both the modern day and past. They are showing their people in ways that historically have not suited the white supremacist narrative that colonial art is so fond of. Many of the works that I will feature in the exhibit are pieces that mimic those of the great masters. A lot of these pieces are reimagined to suit the artist’s narrative and view, either of the historic event or one that represents something more.
Art Museums need to adjust their collections of European and American art to show more than one perspective. These artists show different sides of their communities through comedy, trauma, and fantasy. Diversified representation is key in getting more than a one-dimensional view of a certain race, gender, geographic origin or even class. Art can help the viewer see themselves and others in ways they never thought possible, and that gift is something to be shared because it can have an impact on the generations to come.
Annotated Bibliography
Carpenter, Marian. “View from the Field: The Challenges to Being Inclusive in Museum Collections.” The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, August 23, 2019. https://inclusivehistorian.com/view-from-the-field-the-challenges-to-being-inclusive-in-museum-collections/.
https://www.kapharstudio.com/work/
Kaphar, Titus. “A Fight for Remembrance.” The Georgia Review 69, no. 2 (2015): 199–208. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44077632.
Kaphar, Titus, and Jason Stanley. “Titus Kaphar.” BOMB, no. 147 (2019): 81–88. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26876294.
“Kehinde Wiley Studio KW Studio.” Kehinde Wiley Studio. Accessed May 23, 2022. https://kehindewiley.com/works/.
https://www.kentmonkman.com/painting
Kennicott, Philip. “Perspective | America Needs an Epic Narrative Right Now. Painters Are Working on It.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 30 Nov. 2020,
LEVENSON, CYRA. “Re-Presenting Slavery: Underserved Questions in Museum Collections.” Studies in Art Education 55, no. 2 (2014): 157–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24465492.
Loggans, Regan de, et al. “Mistikôsiwak: Monkman at the Met.” Canadian Art, 2 June 2020.
https://canadianart.ca/essays/mistikosiwak-kent-monkman-at-the-met/.
Prater, Paige, and Rachel May Smith. “Double: Seeing Double: Kehinde Wiley’s Portraits.” Art Education 68, no. 6 (2015): 46–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45239774.
Wexler, Alice. “Museum Culture and the Inequities of Display and Representation.” Visual Arts Research 33, no. 1 (2007): 25–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715431.
