Synopses & Reviews
Prior to 1967 fewer than a dozen museum exhibitions had featured the work of African American artists. And by the time the civil rights movement reached the American art museum, it had already crested: the first public demonstrations to integrate museums occurred in late 1968, twenty years after the desegregation of the military and fourteen years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. In
Mounting Frustration Susan E. Cahan investigates the strategies African American artists and museum professionals employed as they wrangled over access to and the direction of New York Cityand#39;s elite museums. Drawing on numerous interviews with artists and analyses of internal museum documents, Cahan gives a detailed and at times surprising picture of the institutional and social forces that both drove and inhibited racial justice in New Yorkand#39;s museums.
Cahan focuses on high-profile and wildly contested exhibitions that attempted to integrate African American culture and art into museums, each of which ignited debate, dissension, and protest. The Metropolitan Museumand#39;s 1969 exhibition Harlem on My Mind was supposed to represent the neighborhood, but it failed to include the work of the black artists living and working there. While the Whitneyand#39;s 1971 exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America featured black artists, it was heavily criticized for being haphazard and not representative. The Whitney show revealed the consequences of museumsand#39; failure to hire African American curators, or even white curators who possessed knowledge of black art. Cahan also recounts the long history of the Museum of Modern Artand#39;s institutional ambivalence toward contemporary artists of color, which reached its zenith in its 1984 exhibition andquot;Primitivismandquot; in Twentieth Century Art. Representing modern art as a white European and American creation that was influenced by the andquot;primitiveandquot; art of people of color, the show only served to further devalue and cordon off African American art.
In addressing the racial politics of New Yorkand#39;s art world, Cahan shows how aesthetic ideas reflected the underlying structural racism and inequalities that African American artists faced. These inequalities are still felt in Americaand#39;s museums, as many fundamental racial hierarchies remain intact: art by people of color is still often shown in marginal spaces; one-person exhibitions are the preferred method of showing the work of minority artists, as they provide curators a way to avoid engaging with the problems of complicated, interlocking histories; and whiteness is still often viewed as the norm. The ongoing process of integrating museums, Cahan demonstrates, is far broader than overcoming past exclusions.
Review
andquot;In this outstanding and nuanced book, Susan E. Cahan illuminates a discourse over inclusion that took place all over the country, and not just in visual art, but even in opera and ballet where the very presence of the black body became an issue. Her analysis reveals the museumsand#39; duplicity, confusion, and attempts to serve only their own interests, and the names of excluded artists repeated in this book are shocking, as are the indications that curators claimed to have not known of people like Jacob Lawrence.
Mounting Frustration is a most welcome means of cracking the silence and complacency around the retrenchment since activists opened the discourse on who owns culture.andquot;
Review
andquot;A long overdue, well-researched history, citing heroes and villains, of the struggle waged by artists of color to get their work recognized by the white art establishment. Naming names, recounting specific battles, and giving an accurate picture of the inner workings of a dismissive museum bureaucracy determined to guard its Eurocentric heritage, Susan E. Cahan has done a remarkable job of reporting on a conflict that, despite some hard-won victories for artists, still simmers.andquot;
Review
andquot;The history of cultural politics in America is one both of individual insights and collective initiatives, of attempts to grasp the meaning of deeply embedded social and economic inequalities, and the equally profound misunderstandings that have bedeviled most attempts to translate painfully slow changes in attitudes toward race and class into enduring changes in institutional structures. Susan E. Cahanand#39;s study of how American museums tried and largely failed to break this pattern in the 1960s and 1970s is a major contribution to the field of institutional critique. Unlike many, though, it is informed by a close analysis of personalities and events. It will be a touchstone both for scholars and those trying hard to avoid repeating mistakes of the pastandmdash;especially those who were and#39;well-intentionedand#39; but woefully inattentive to the harsh realities they sought to address.andquot;and#160;
Synopsis
In Mounting Frustration Susan E. Cahan uncovers the moment when the civil rights movement reached New York Cityand#39;s elite art galleries. Focusing on three controversial exhibitions that integrated African American culture and art, Cahan shows how the art worldand#39;s racial politics is far more complicated than overcoming past exclusions.
About the Author
Susan E. Cahan is Associate Dean and Dean of the Arts in Yale College, the editor of
I Remember Heaven: Jim Hodges and Andy Warhol, and the coeditor of
Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education. She has directed programs at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Peter Norton Family Foundation.
Art History Publication Initiative
Table of Contents
List of Illustrationsand#160; vii
Acknowledgmentsand#160; xiii
Introductionand#160; 1
1. Electronic Refractions II at the Studio Museum in Harlemand#160; 13
2. Harlem on My Mind at the Metropolitan Museum of Artand#160; 31
3. Contemporary Back Artists in America at the Whitney Museum of American Artand#160; 109
4. Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual and The Sculpture of Richard Hunt at the Museum of Modern Artand#160; 171
Epilogueand#160; 253
Notesand#160; 269
Bibliographyand#160; 319
Index