Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom

08/03/2026

Dorothy Berry, Digital Curator for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, is a fearless writer. She is unapologetically academic while maintaining a singular voice, a balance I still aspire to achieve in my own writing. I was honored that she contributed "Splendid Mammoth Afric-American Image Search: A Personal Essay" to the latest issue of Winterthur Portfolio, which I guest edited as a companion to my exhibition Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery. In this deeply personal essay, Dorothy places William J. Wilson's imagined 1859 "Afric-American Picture Gallery" alongside J. P. Ball's Splendid Mammoth Pictorial Tour and her own work as an archivist, arguing that while digital technologies expand access to Black history, they also introduce new risks in an age of generative AI. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741297

07/31/2026

This is Mary Fleet's 1749 needlework picture, the starting point for Mariah Kupfner's brilliant essay "Many Hands: Crafting Race and Presence in Eighteenth-Century Boston." I first encountered Mariah's work through a captivating talk she gave at the DAR Museum on Sarah Shimm's lost embroidered sofa, which revealed her remarkable ability to recover black histories through material culture. I was therefore honored that she contributed to the latest issue of Winterthur Portfolio, which I guest edited as a companion to my exhibition. In "Many Hands," Mariah pairs Mary Fleet's celebrated needlework with the work of Peter Fleet, an enslaved printer and woodcut artist, to show how seemingly white-authored objects were shaped by the labor, knowledge, and creativity of enslaved black artisans. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741349

07/30/2026

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) launched The United States of Fashion, inviting designers to reimagine the American flag through their own creative vision. For his contribution, Tremaine Emory of Denim Tears drew upon his family's history. His design honors the legacy of his grandfather, a celebrated brick mason, while serving as a deeply personal meditation on place and ancestry. Its brick-red surface evokes the iron-rich clay of Georgia, where his family has deep roots, transforming the national emblem into a memorial to the lives, labor, and endurance of enslaved African Americans and their descendants.

Drawing from memories of halcyon summers in Harlem, Georgia, the design honors the legacy of Tremaine Emory’s grandfather, a celebrated brick mason, while also serving as a deeply personal tribute to family, ancestry, and remembrance. The red clay becomes both a symbol of place and a connection to...

07/30/2026

This is Reed Gochberg alongside journalist Judy Woodruff on a recent episode of PBS NewsHour. Until recently, Reed was the Associate Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Concord Museum and is now a curator at the Boston Athenæum. Before either of us began our museum careers, we shared an office at Harvard University, where we co-taught the sophomore seminar "Museums and Material Culture" twice.

Reed was also the person who first introduced me to William J. Wilson's "Afric-American Picture Gallery," so I was especially delighted that she contributed "Shadowed Figures, Polished Surfaces: Representing Enslaved Labor and Histories of Care" to the latest issue of Winterthur Portfolio, which I guest edited as a companion to my exhibition. Drawing on her groundbreaking exhibition Whose Revolution at the Concord Museum, Reed asks how museums might recover the lives of enslaved people through the objects they were forced to care for. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741298

07/29/2026

Betye Saar first exhibited her iconic 1972 assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima in the Black Heroes exhibition at the Rainbow Sign Cultural Center in Berkeley. Inspired by the Black Arts Movement's call for a radical black aesthetic, Saar transformed the familiar Aunt Jemima figure from a symbol of black servitude and the mythology of the Old South into an icon of black resistance. Armed with a rifle and grenades, Aunt Jemima becomes a revolutionary committed to black liberation. Look closely and you'll notice that the smaller portrait she holds depicts a black woman raising a Black Power fist.

More than fifty years later, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima remains one of the defining works of American art. Its power only became more apparent when Quaker Oats finally retired the racist Aunt Jemima brand, acknowledging what Saar had made unmistakably clear in 1972: Aunt Jemima deserved liberation.

Rest in power, Betye Saar.

07/29/2026

The Sankofa was a recurring motif throughout the exhibition. At the entrance, its silhouette was projected onto the floor. This iPhone photograph, taken by Derrick Spires, captures his students carefully stepping around the projection. Because Spires teaches at the University of Delaware, he was able to bring his classes to the exhibition. He noticed that the students avoided stepping on the Sankofa, even though it was only a projection rather than a physical object. I had hoped to use this photograph for the cover of the issue because, to me, it beautifully reflects contemporary engagement with African American history and visual culture, but its dimensions ultimately made that impossible.

I was honored that Spires contributed to the latest issue of Winterthur Portfolio, which I guest edited as a companion to my exhibition. In "Dancing with History in the 'Afric-American Picture Gallery,' Almost Unknown, and 'Banshee,'" Spires brings William J. Wilson's 1859 text into conversation with the exhibition and Santigold and Kara Walker's Banshee. Of all the essays in the issue, his engages most directly with my curatorial practice, offering a generous and deeply insightful meditation on the exhibition's relationship to contemporary black aesthetics. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741464

07/28/2026

Britt Russert is the leading scholar of William J. Wilson's Afric-American Picture Gallery. In just a few weeks, Duke University Press will publish her long-awaited book on the text. The cover features an installation by Genevieve Gaignard.

Alongside Mia L. Bagneris, Russert also contributed "Shadowing Forth Decay: Mount Vernon in the 'Afric-American Picture Gallery'" to the latest issue of Winterthur Portfolio, which I guest edited as a companion to my exhibition. Although Mount Vernon has long been celebrated as a symbol of the nation's founding, Bagneris and Rusert reveal how William J. Wilson radically reimagined it as a haunted plantation where the violence of slavery remained visible. By placing Wilson's speculative museum in conversation with nineteenth-century visual culture, they demonstrate how he challenged idealized representations of George Washington's estate and anticipated many of the questions that continue to animate contemporary black art. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741463

07/27/2026

I'm excited to share my essay "The Evolution of the Afric-American" in the latest issue of Winterthur Portfolio, which I guest edited as a companion to my exhibition Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery. Long before "African American" entered common usage, Black intellectuals, journalists, and activists debated whether "Afric-American" should become the preferred national designation. The essay traces more than 200 years of debates over how people of African descent in the United States have named ourselves—from "Afric-American" and "negro" to "Negro," "African American," "black," and "Black." These names have never been neutral; they have always been contested, political, and historically contingent. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741299

07/24/2026

"Imitation of Life" reveals the contradictions of black representation in Hollywood. While Louise Beavers gives a powerful performance in the film, the poster centers the melodrama of racial passing through the figure of Peola (played by Fredi Washington), reflecting contemporary anxieties about race, beauty, and belonging. Like many posters in "Act Black," it demonstrates how black performers were simultaneously made visible and constrained by the visual conventions of American cinema. posterhouse.org/exhibition/act-black-posters-from-black-american-stage-screen

07/23/2026

This is a poster of George Walker and Bert Williams who were among the most celebrated celebrated theatrical partners of the early twentieth century. One of the most striking aspects of their partnership was that they appeared differently: Bert Williams performed in blackface while George Walker did not. Williams became famous through a blackface persona, while Walker cultivated the image of an urbane black dandy, revealing the different strategies black performers adopted within the constraints of American popular entertainment. posterhouse.org/event/black-chorus-girls-a-panel-conversation