Legacy
The centerpiece of this case, Kara Walker’s artist’s book, Freedom: A Fable – A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times with Illustrations, 1997, poses important questions about what means to have freedom. Walker’s book weaves a rather convoluted tale of slavery, abolition, and conquest. Though set in the nineteenth century, Freedom is a critique of racial and gender freedom in the 20th and 21st century. Walker asks us to consider the lingering legacy of slavery and the various forms of confinement, surveillance, and control that continue to disenfranchise black people in America. As an object, Freedom demonstrates how precarious a state freedom can be. Walker’s demeaning and exaggerated silhouette forms require the reader to participate in racial profiling, and dynamic pop-up scenes draw the reader in as an active participant. At once the reader is both liberated and ensnared.
This case explores the concept of freedom and how racist objects and images function as a form of control. The artists’ books displayed here come from artists who draw on the relics and remnants of slavery and nineteenth century visual culture more broadly, reactivating them for the contemporary reader. Confederate currency printed with images of enslaved people speaks to the cost of black bodies and the importance of slave labor to thesouthern economy. The inhumane business of slave trading is exposed in The Business is Suffering by Maureen Cummins. “Little Black Sambo” and the “Ten Little Pickaninnies” ad campaign represent the saleability of negative black stereotypes. Many of these images still circulate today in the media, limiting the awareness of unique black identities.
Curlee Raven Holton explores black self-determination through creative expression in Blues Book. The musical genre we call “the blues” originated on southern plantations, invented by enslaved people who sang as they worked in the fields. A hand-made book featuring pressed sea-weed specimens collected on the British Coast was donated to the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Money raised would help in abolitionist efforts to secure freedom for the millions of people forced into servitude in the South. Each of these objects opens a dialogue about freedom, and together they beg the question: Will we ever be free from the legacy of slavery?
Freedom, A Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times, with Illustrations
"Each year the Peter Norton Family commissions an art edition to celebrate the Christmas season and holidays. This year's is a pop-up silhouette book by Kara Walker." —Title page verso.
The Business is Suffering
"The project was inspired by a collection of letters ... in the archive of the American Antiquarian Society ... The letters are part of the slavery in the U.S. collection and are reproduced here by kind permission of AAS."
On spine of slipcase: RHD & Bro., Richmond, Va; dealers & auctioneers: letters, 1846-1863.
Blues Book
"All plates are handpulled etchings and aquatints."
"Ten prints in an edition of fifteen signed and numbered by the artist. Ten bound editions. Five folio editions." Each print is preceded by a transparent sheet with a drawing outlining a portion of the underlying print, labeled in pencil.