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New World Picture

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  On August 9, 2014 officer Darren Wilson brutally murdered unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The fatal altercation resulted in Brown’s body lying in the street for roughly four hours. In the   wake of the shooting, Ferguson residents flooded the streets and West Florissant Avenue became the central stage on which the social and political unrest began to unfold. For three seemingly endless months, protesters confronted local police enforcement and the National Guard in the streets of Ferguson as they demonstrated pleas for justice. The incident drew national and international attention garnering support all over the globe. Hands raised and voices bellowing from dawn until dusk, demonstrators faced military-style tactics of tear-gas, rubber bullets, and streets barricaded with armed bodies and massive tanks. A scene of civic demonstration resembled the ruinous landscape of war, ravenous appetite of state power, and the fungibility of Black bodies in th...
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Doris Salcedo

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    Born in 1958 in Bogotá, Colombia, Doris Salcedo is a contemporary sculpture artist working on themes of memory, violence, and hierarchies. Salcedo began her career in the late-1980s by thinking through abstract forms that could monumentalize violence, particularly that inflicted by the state. Collaborating with architects and engineers, Salcedo conceives of her structures as odes to the victims of senseless violence. Growing up in Bogotá, Salcedo had first-hand experience of the ways in which war cements itself in the mundane and consumes all aspects of citizens lives. War is often conceived of as a global phenomenon including one or more countries, but Salcedo conceives of war as multivalent and having both internal and external implications.    Salcedo’s practice is highly meditative and occupied with globality in a contemporary sense. While the war in Colombia was a civil war its reverberations can be felt all over the globe. The Colombia Civil War connects to...
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Ivory in the Transnational Context

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  Ivory in the Transnational Context   Rectangular Box with Carved Figural Decoration Qing Dynasty second half of 19 th  century 1895.287.A-I   Seated Virgin Emilia/Italy, Europe 17 th  century 1922.79   The Virgin and Child c. 1325-1350 Ile-de-France, Europe 1931.33   Oliphant, Trumpet made from elephant’s tusk Elephant ivory trumpet with decorative knobs and engravings woodwind Loanda, Southwest Coast, Angola   Following Professor Suzanne Blier’s focus on ivory as a material emblematic of encounter, I decided to think through the international circulation and appropriation of ivory as indicative of nascent imperial trade networks that engendered contact. Ranging from domestic tools to liturgical and devotional objects, ivory was malleably in its conceptual and symbolic deployment, but also in its literal form. The oliphant or trumpet made from elephant’s tusk maintains the organic shape of the elephant tusks while adding minimal decorative bands...
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Medieval Money

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  Follis of Tancred of Antioch Coin 1104-1112 CE Antioch (Syria) Metal 1951.31.4.2239   Ducat of Roger II of Sicily  Coins 1130-1154 CE Sicily Metal 1951.31.4.2251 Copper Follis of Bohemond the II of Antioch Coin 1119-1130 CE Antioch/ Syria Metal 1951.31.4.2245 Dinar of Abu Hafs `Umar ibn Ishaq Coins c. 1250 North Africa Metal 2003.235   Tancred was a leader of the First Crusade who later became the Prince of Galilee and regent of Antioch. In 1096, Tancred joined forces with his uncle as they conquered land in their trek toward Constantinople. Tancred and his uncle represented the Italo-Norman forces ravaged the Mediterranean coast seizing Antioch and Jerusalem. The  Follis of Tancred of Antioch  represents contact between the Byzantine Empire and crusaders from the Norman Dynasty. During the Medieval ages it is noted that the Norman dynasty had an indelible impact on other parts of Europe and the Near East. The term  follis describes a type of coin po...
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Ancient Female Figures

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  Female Figure of the Spedos Variety Cycladic/ Early Bronze Age Sculpture 2600-2500 BCE 1995.1134   This female figure comes from Cyclades, a group of islands off the coast of Greece. The marble works exhibit ancient Grecian ideals of the female form. The figure’s arms are crossed beneath her breasts suggested by two small mounds. Direct relief lines shape a pelvic mound and give form to the figure’s limbs and joints. This representation of the Cycladic figure belongs to the Spedos type named after the cemetery were a great number of them were found. The abstracted face lacks many details except a sculptural protrusion hinting the contours of a nose. The curves of the figures waist and hips allude to the possibility of the figures use in rituals for fertility. Although the exact purpose of female figures of the Spedos variety is not known, scholars hypothesize they may have been incorporated in fertility, religious, or funerary rituals.      Standing Figure Egy...
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Objects of Personhood

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  Medium: Photography Critical Term: Personhood   Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons Elevata 2002 Cuban  96 x 80 inches P2004.11   Lorna Simpson, American (Brooklyn, NY born 1960) 1957-2009 Interior 2009 American Gelatin silver prints overall dimensions variable Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund 2010.1   Malick Sidibé, African (Soloba, Mali 1935 - 2016 Bamako, Mali) Untitled (studio portrait, young couple with baby) April 1, 1976 Malian Gelatin silver print sheet: 12.7 x 8.5 cm (5 x 3 3/8 in.) Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Gift in honor of Michelle Lamunière P2001.39     Yinka Shonibare, British (London, England born 1962) Fake Death Picture (The Suicide - Leonardo Alenza) 2011 British Digital chromogenic print framed: 194 × 148.9 × 4.1 cm (76 3/8 × 58 5/8 × 1 5/8 in.) Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Ruth and William S. Ehrlich 2016.420  J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, African (Ovbiomu-Emai, Nigeria 1930 - 2014) Atiai 19...
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Stories of Difference

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Glen Ligon Condition Report 2000  2006.78.A. + 2006.78B   Faith Ringgold  Black Light Series #8: Red White Black Nigger 1969 2014.18   Carrie Mae Weems You Became a Scientific Profile 1995-96 P2001.28.1   Carrie Mae Weems & A Photographic Subject 1995-96 P2001.28.4     Individually and collectively these four objects tell the story of difference through reckoning with identity. In  Condition Report,  Glen Ligon appropriated the signage carried by black sanitation workers during a 1968 strike in Memphis, Tennessee. The placard signs state “I AM A MAN” which Ligon transformed into a diptych that includes a fictive condition report. This work emblematizes difference through the counterstatement asserting humanity and similarity.    Faith Ringgold’s  Black Light Series #8: Red White Black Nigger  is a citation of the United States flag and Jasper Johns’ flag paintings appropriating their colors and other compositional devi...
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