WE WEAR THE MASK:
RACE AND REPRESENTATION IN THE DORSKY MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION
We Wear the Mask stages the contradictions inherent in representations of race and in American culture as a whole—as exemplified by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art's Permanent Collection. Featuring a range of artwork and artifacts that span almost three-thousand years—from ancient Egyptian funerary figures to polaroid photographs by Andy Warhol, — eighteen works selected from the over six-thousand objects in the Dorsky Museum collection are paired into distinct juxtapositions. A trans-historical, multi-cultural “remixing,” this exhibition seeks a third space of meaning to better represent and understand racial diversity in this moment of cultural and political reckoning.
Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, Guest Curator
“What is often called the black soul is a white man’s artifact.”
- Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
“It is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.”
- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
In our current moment, inextricably overlapping crises threaten almost every assumption that once defined “normal.” The seemingly biblical overtones of our time suggest a reckoning, that we re-evaluate established hierarchies and extract a balance sheet in order to inquire: What is to our profit? What is to our loss? What is the significance of our moment and our things?
Our museums are not immune to this scrutiny. In a series of essays titled “Whitewalling,” Aruna d’Souza asks: Is it possible “to approach the question of what art institutions hang on their walls without asking about the responsibility […] to make space for everyone, or at least be honest about whom they are built to serve?” Museums should be what democracy looks like. In this sense, museums are not and cannot be neutral. To be neutral is to be silent. And we know Silence = Death.
We Wear the Mask asks what this reckoning staged inside a museum might look like. From over six thousand objects in the Dorsky Museum’s Permanent Collection, I selected a range of artwork and artifacts that span almost three thousand years. Knowing that no single image or object could carry the burden of exposing inequitable systems of power inherent in representations of race in American culture as a whole, the works in We Wear the Mask are paired into distinct juxtapositions. Designed as a transhistorical, multicultural “remixing,” the exhibition seeks a third space of meaning to stage the contradictions – and limitations –
of racial diversity in museum collections.
This moment has altered the significance of these things. Who I am as an artist is inevitably changed by encountering this collection just as, hopefully, audience awareness of the collection will be altered by this collaborative effort with the Dorsky team to question who museums have been built to serve, so we can do more to make space for everyone.
- Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
“It is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.”
- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
In our current moment, inextricably overlapping crises threaten almost every assumption that once defined “normal.” The seemingly biblical overtones of our time suggest a reckoning, that we re-evaluate established hierarchies and extract a balance sheet in order to inquire: What is to our profit? What is to our loss? What is the significance of our moment and our things?
Our museums are not immune to this scrutiny. In a series of essays titled “Whitewalling,” Aruna d’Souza asks: Is it possible “to approach the question of what art institutions hang on their walls without asking about the responsibility […] to make space for everyone, or at least be honest about whom they are built to serve?” Museums should be what democracy looks like. In this sense, museums are not and cannot be neutral. To be neutral is to be silent. And we know Silence = Death.
We Wear the Mask asks what this reckoning staged inside a museum might look like. From over six thousand objects in the Dorsky Museum’s Permanent Collection, I selected a range of artwork and artifacts that span almost three thousand years. Knowing that no single image or object could carry the burden of exposing inequitable systems of power inherent in representations of race in American culture as a whole, the works in We Wear the Mask are paired into distinct juxtapositions. Designed as a transhistorical, multicultural “remixing,” the exhibition seeks a third space of meaning to stage the contradictions – and limitations –
of racial diversity in museum collections.
This moment has altered the significance of these things. Who I am as an artist is inevitably changed by encountering this collection just as, hopefully, audience awareness of the collection will be altered by this collaborative effort with the Dorsky team to question who museums have been built to serve, so we can do more to make space for everyone.
Exhibition Images
Press
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