Global Art History

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...

  Repatriation Unidentified Artist Hand-held Clapper with Bird of Prophecy 17 th - 18 th  century 1988.472   The royal palace, Benin City; probably taken by British forces during the Punitive Expedition, 1897. Lois Dailey Orswell, Pomfret Center, CT, by 1972, gift; to the Harvard University Art Museums, 1988   Unidentified Artist Three Figures (from the north side of the east wall of Mogao Cave 323 Dunhuang, Gansu province) 7 th  century 1924.40   The two objects I chose for the section entitled repatriation represent Harvard Art Museums connections plunder in the name of imperialism. The  Hand-held Clapper with Bird of Prophecy  from the royal palace of Benin City was likely extracted during the Benin Expedition (Punitive Expedition) of 1897 under Admiral Sir Harry Rawson of the United Kingdom. The military forces, under Admiral Rawson’s lead, plundered and devastated the West African Kingdom of Benin. [1]  Lois Dailey Orswell, a collector o...

Doris Salcedo A Flor de Piel (2013) Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons Elevata (2002) The thirteen objects I chose as syllabus foci for a global art historical approach to considering the spiritual, performative and conceptual understanding of the foundations we walk on. I engage this in the most capacious sense, greatly influenced by Sarah Lewis’ concept of “groundwork” and my own intrigue with African and African Diaspora studies and its material cultures. The objects exist across a range of geographical and temporal periods to allow students to consider the paradox of globality, that is the heightened sense of connection met with growing realization of incongruency brought on by uneven development.  The objects illustrate the importance of ground or even groundlessness especially the conceptual objects such as Doris Salcedo’s A Flor de Piel . Salcedo sutured thousands of rose petals to create a fragile shroud usually displayed on gallery floors. The materiality of the object emphasizes...