MAY I PLEASE HAVE MY HISTORY BACK? PT 2

To follow up with a previous posting on museums wanting artifacts back, I thought I would post these two really interesting video clips from National Geographic regarding Egyptian antiquities and the Parthenon Marbles. Interesting debates, who do you side with?:


Egypt Wants Treasures Back


Parthenon Marbles Battle

I was not aware of this but there are some pretty amazing history videos on the National Geographic Website under the video of the day section/history.

Bringing A Sense of Space to the Discipline of History

While working on research for the upcoming exhibit A Sense of Space: The Blind Culture at the McIntosh Gallery, I experienced the divide between those who are visually impaired and fine arts (or visual arts). Similarly, this also exists with the discipline of history. Both are highly visual disciplines which require sight to read and interpret information. Unless this information has been transferred into audio format or Braille, fine arts and history are completely inaccessible to the visually impaired community.

In the A Sense of Space exhibit, artists move away from traditional museum standards and ways of exploring art mainly by allowing it to be touched (this has been a hot topic of discussion among my classmates). Imagine for instance exploring a famous Monet painting through touch and getting a sense of the artists' style by way of the feel of the brush strokes or following the lines of a classical Greek sculpture to identify the idealized silhouette from that period. This approach bridges a major gap.

But how many visually impaired people study history? I have not personally come across any! This bothers me, because just like exploring art, I know how exciting and rewarding the study of primary research can be and how vital it is to historical analysis. Also, our society does not always consider the issues that visually impaired face in academia such as having Braille sources available along with other tools such as magnifiers for reading. In the case of libraries, understanding that it can take longer for visually impaired patrons to read books, meaning they require longer loan periods is just one of the many practical details.

According to Student Development Services at University of Western Ontario, there are 5 students who are completely blind and many others who have different levels of visual impairment at the school. The university assists these students in a number of ways from having textbooks transcribed into Braille (which has to be planned a year in advance), proctoring examinations or providing access to adaptive computer technologies. Fortunately, popular screen readers for those with visual impairments such as JAWS (Job Access with Speech) appear to be more easily available than they once were.

Access to computers and the Internet has opened many doors. However, the same old story of the rapidly changing computer technology poses problems. For instance, although JAWS reads most PDF’s, some older versions are still inaccessible for tagging which is a great tool for visually impaired, so these require OCR. Refreshable Braille displays are another excellent tool for computer usage as they allow for the user to become familiar with the screen formatting through a machine that translates computer information into raised dots. It puts into words details like windows or sidebars which can get complicated with new types of computer programs. This is typically used along with a screen reader.

Although these systems will face challenges, there have been some great innovations in this field of communications and design which are providing the visually impaired with valuable tools of access. I predict we will see a new community of historians in the near future who will bring along with them dynamic ways of seeing and interpreting history. So let us keep up the digitizing and move over to make some space!

Interested in exploring new ways of seeing? Check out A Sense of Space: Blind Culture which runs from March 6-April 6 at the McIntosh Gallery located on the University of Western Ontario campus.

Is contemporary art an appropriate medium to explore history?

The Case of the Black Santa

The Black Santa by Canadian artist Léopold Foulem is an exaggerated caricature of a black Santa Claus in the form of a coffeepot. Its display caused a stir at the Saint Mary’s Art Gallery in Halifax last week when students demanded that the art to be removed from display due to its racist portrayal of blacks. The gallery curator Robin Metcalf has refused to remove the display stating: "It would be against our fundamental principles and our code of ethics as an art gallery to censor work and remove it from public display because some viewers object to them, however well considered their objections may be.”1

After getting a glimpse of this piece of art through recent coverage in the Halifax Herald, like the gallery’s curator, I read it as a reflection of the racist characterization of blacks at the turn of the century in North American popular culture, not an endorsement of it.2 I am not sure how important its form as a coffeepot is, as the artist who also had coverage in The Coast currently seems focused on having his medium of ceramic work viewed out of its functional form and into the setting of contemporary art. Whatever art form it takes, what is significant for the sake of this discussion is that it is a representation of a black stereotypical image that would be immediately recognizable to those living in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

After gathering photographs for an exhibition last year, I was struck by just how deeply rooted this concept of black iconography was. Blackness was associated with comedy and the silly portrayals of blacks in theatre, cartoons and especially advertising were a means of justifying the racism that had existed. The photos I uncovered while working at the museum were of children actors from what was called a blackface theatre troupe distinguished by their black painted faces and comedic Harlequin costumes. There were many different theatre groups portrayed in this collection of photos in a similar manner over the span of several decades. These powerful images stuck out in my mind as documenting an extreme form of racism. We rarely see visual depictions like these of racism from the perspective of their arbitrator. These popular images are our visual link into the psychology or mindset behind these very real constructs.

I am not sure that taking down this art is the solution. I think the Black Santa brings up valuable questions about our history. Firstly, can we learn anything from these contemporary interpretations of history? Would old photos, for instance the ones I discovered at the museum, alongside a detailed text panel which contextualizes the history be a more appropriate means to deliver a message about the racism that existed during this time period? A major issue for me is that these images still exist today and we often don’t even acknowledge or challenge them. Perhaps delivering them in the form of contemporary art will more successfully direct our attention to this history, just as the Black Santa has. Aunt Jemima is still on the cover of everyone’s favorite pancake syrup, an image which is a caricature of a nineteenth-century performer. Taking down a piece of art won’t erase this image, this history or the fact that it is still in circulation today. But it does seem to open up the door to discussion and further exploration of the subject or in the words of the artist on his ceramics,"[t]hey make you think!"3


1 Kelly Sheirs, "Black Santa offensive, student says" in The Halifax Herald, 10 Nov. 2007, http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/977694.html (accessed 10 Nov. 2007).
2 Ibid.
3. Mike Landry, "Hard copy", in The Coast, 1 Nov. 2007, http://www.thecoast.ca/119808.113118body.lasso?-token.folder=2007-11-01&-token.story=151032.113118&-token.subpub= (accessed 10 Nov. 2007).