Who REALLY Invented a Sculpture?; An Expose on Systemic Erasure of Black People in Art By Gabrielle Wylie-Chaney

Besides the large hall dedicated to Ancient Egyptian art, the Boston MFA has only two rooms devoted to art made in Africa. Systemic Racism is prominent in American museums, created through the fabrication of races and elitism in art, ultimately destroying a common perception of black lives and their histories, and furthering white ignorance and aversion. Those in higher education are the most interactive with this issue, but it ultimately affects the general population. The histories of art made by black artists have been stolen and told through lies in the institutions of Western museums. While I have been studying art history, many occurrences of genetic lies supporting and advocating racism in the times of enslavement are still apparent in modern-day art museums through wordage. Distinguishing white superiority in terms of advancement of technology and beauty, modern art classes and museums continue to deprioritize and dehumanize African art through has been incorporated into the study of the history of art and public prioritization limiting the representation and genuinity of the stories being told, by those not Black. 

This painting (Las Castas, 18th century. Tepotzotlán, México) was the first thing on the board in my Art History class last week. The display shows the invention of 16 different races made for Central America during the peak time of enslavement and colonization of the 1700s. This invention of race was used to justify the atrocities of enslavement, and Las Castas is a prime example of the ways white conquistadors expanded their ideas of race while keeping those with darker skin in servitude. The painting is used to post to the masses, what their designated race is, and therefore place in the social order and priority. Ferber, a scholar in the study of sociology, argues that thanks to the evolving of European minds in the 18th century, more myths about race were able to be recorded. Saying, “The Enlightenment emphasized the scientific practices of observing, collecting evidence, measuring bodies and developing classification schematic.” Europeans, who were focused on scientific developments, leaned into the order of nature and therefore began to create “natural” orders in society. This led to the creation of racial separations and worked to justify the abuse and mistreatment of black individuals in colonized states. The lies created surrounding race to place people into hierarchical castes in society, created a system of prioritization and higher value in Western and white-created art. As I continue to study art history, way too much content focuses on technique and storytelling, the values of the rich and white in every culture on earth. A phenomenon created by the history of propaganda, like Las Castas. 

The myth about race being genetic is proven wrong here by the creation of new races like Mulatto, which expand to present-day ideologies of race (Three Races, Francisco Laso. 1859, Peru). Following the creation of enslavement and caste systems, Latin and Central America was significantly altered to favor white colonists. Francisco Laso, a painter who trained in proto-European schools of art, created the Three Races, which acts as a critique of society. I don’t have the space to delve into the complexities of this painting but it illustrates the laid-out system of hierarchy in race, where white goes first, then Indigenous, and lastly black. This acts as a form of Laissez Faire Racism, coined by sociologist Lawrence Bobo. It is a description of a pattern in society of normalizing the black life as culturally less important. Bobo says; “Thus, a new antiblack ideology has crystallized, an ideology that is appropriate to a historical epoch in which we have a formally race-neutral state and economy but a still racially divided social order and quality of life experience.” This format of ideology creates a structure on which art history stands and shows up in modern museums.  The MFA’s Art of the Americas and Arts of Africa prioritize work created by white artists in an academic/proto-European style, dismissing other art forms and cultural practices as foreign, ritualistic, and almost primitive. Subtly museums can paint Europeans as having a deep history of evolution in art and reduce everyone else's achievements that they didn't use and manipulate, like the Egyptians. black and African are not synonymous terms and should be given respect in the spaces of art and higher education. Many of Africa’s countries are not represented in museums, thanks to the rhetoric boiling down African history to a primitive society that needed white involvement.  

There is a significant discourse of misinformation around structural racism, where many parts of white America don’t actively feel the side effects, so they deny its existence. Ray, another sociologist, discusses the normalization by saying; “[Racial] Discourses become apparent via normalized and accepted institutional practices… Social structures and social processes are organized by institutions such as government, communities, and media which are situated in particular mainstream discourses.” The importance of recognizing the structure of not allowing Black art and stories to be told or shown to the public, and delegitimizing their experience is everlasting till today. There is a lack of black or African art historians, and I have heard white art historians argue that “Black people don’t care about art or preserving history”, when in fact it is the lack of opportunity and suppression of black voices built into our system of higher education and museums. The Smithsonian Museum of African Art has recently been reported to be prioritizing white employees on their curatorial team. Even when black art historians have surpassed the barriers to higher education that are in place to favor white students, they are still not prioritized in their workplace, WHERE THEIR STORIES ARE BEING TOLD. The lack of representation and scholars in the art history area, can only negatively affect the quality and truthfulness of the stories being fed to the public, much like why many Americans associate African countries with primitiveness, and even combine them to think of Africa as a country, because it is only being given two rooms in a museum compared to the fifty for Greek and Roman alone. 

Many argue that a majority of the work from the African continent that Museums hold is stolen, which they are, but it is unlawful to display or promote these works. In fact, with the invention of modern technology, that many museums have not caught up to, there are so many ways to tell Black and Latin history, not just through physical items. There is also the lawful option of repatriation of items to their origins, and developing a system of renting pieces for display like we do with modern art, where the owners are living. Another element of the “lack of pieces from African artists” is that much of their art, especially in West Africa i.e. Nigeria, was stolen and destroyed in the process of forcibly removing people and bringing them into enslavement. Most of what is now Latin America and African countries have had their histories pre-1500s destroyed. Without access to oral stories, as in people from specific cultures, accurate histories could never be told in white society, as we are only telling our interpretation. 

As an art history student, the ability to be able to study accurate histories and honor important innovations in different cultures is taken away through lack of representation and information in the area. If there were more systems like affirmative action in place, for black students and international students to enter university, more spaces could be dedicated to studying accurate histories and placing those into museums for the public. The Boston MFA and many other American museums limit black and African histories to singular stories of primal nature as if they don’t create amazing art throughout their LONG histories.