Takeaways​ from the Amistad Exhibit

 Predictions:

I predict that when visiting the Wadsworth Museum, much of the art in the museum will offer insight into the lifestyle and issues I have learned about during school already. As it is a school trip, it probably ties into our curriculum and will most likely involve events such as slavery, women’s rights, or possibly politics (such as the party systems). The museum is an art museum so I predict that the events will be visually represented in detail, but I am wondering how accurate the depictions will be when compared to the authentic history.

 

During

The Wadsworth museum was founded in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth. The museum possesses around 50,000 works of art spanning through multiple time periods in history. The main focus we had put on the trip was towards African American history and culture. Many artifacts and paintings helped us take a look at important events, cultures, and personal accounts of daily life.

 

An integral part of the experience on our trip to the Wadsworth was the Amistad exhibit on African American history. Most of the pieces were produced around the mid 19^th century to the late 20^th century and represented primarily the, what would be the current time period. Many of the pieces of art were used to show many of the struggles African Americans survived, such as slavery, discrimination, and prosecution. Some artifacts showed white peoples representation or fascination of the black community in similar connotation as observing a displaced animal. This misrepresentation may influence historical memory negatively and, without the proper understanding of the time period, may cause an inaccurate interpretation of the time period. The Wadsworth museum may show a triumphant and patriotic identity of America as a whole, but when focusing on solely the Amistad exhibit, it represents the dark and immoral identity America possessed during the 18^th and 19^th century of intolerance. While this accurate representation of an American identity may be clearly understood as a dark and embarrassing trait to most viewers, the exhibit does a good job at presenting it in a way that the viewer can form his/her own opinion about the pieces. The exhibit does this by displaying the pieces with descriptions that offer no opinion nor interpretation of their own.

 

Questions:

1. Are there any existing pieces of art that display a different representation of African Americans, from that time period? If so, in what way are African Americans represented?
2. How influential were the pieces of art in the formation of prejudices during that time period?