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January 24, 2024 1:18 PM Subscribe
NEW LIGHT ON THE GROUP PORTRAIT OF ELIHU YALE, HIS FAMILY, AND AN ENSLAVED CHILD (Yale Center for British Art): “ What follows is an explanation of why this change was made and a description of the ongoing research into the picture previously titled Elihu Yale; William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an Enslaved Servant, referred to here by its accession number, B1970.1.”
The Yale Center for British Art has redisplayed a painting of the University’s namesake after investigating the identity of an enslaved Black child depicted in the portrait.
Elihu Yale Was A Slave Trader (Yannielli in the Digital Histories at Yale blog): While the children in the background are shown freely at play, the child in the foreground is shown at work. Like many other depictions of people of African descent in British portraits from this period, the boy’s identity has been largely ignored. The collar on his neck is of a type seen in at least fifty other paintings made in Britain between 1660 and 1760.”
The Yale Center for British Art has redisplayed a painting of the University’s namesake after investigating the identity of an enslaved Black child depicted in the portrait.
Elihu Yale Was A Slave Trader (Yannielli in the Digital Histories at Yale blog): While the children in the background are shown freely at play, the child in the foreground is shown at work. Like many other depictions of people of African descent in British portraits from this period, the boy’s identity has been largely ignored. The collar on his neck is of a type seen in at least fifty other paintings made in Britain between 1660 and 1760.”
Well, we are talking about an institution that had a whole section named for one of the most vehemently pro-slavery politicians in US history.
So not surprising.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:34 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]
So not surprising.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:34 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]
"… one of the most vehemently pro-slavery politicians in US history."
Calhoun?
posted by bz at 1:41 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]
Calhoun?
posted by bz at 1:41 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]
> Well, we are talking about an institution that had a whole section named for one of the most vehemently pro-slavery politicians in US history.
Yale renamed Calhoun College residential hall five years ago. Yale's actively reckoning with its awful past and.. that's bad? I don't understand the implicit criticism in either of these comments. I think both the renaming of Calhoun as well as the analysis and removal of the portrait in TFA are good, and should be celebrated.
posted by riotnrrd at 1:43 PM on January 24 [8 favorites]
Yale renamed Calhoun College residential hall five years ago. Yale's actively reckoning with its awful past and.. that's bad? I don't understand the implicit criticism in either of these comments. I think both the renaming of Calhoun as well as the analysis and removal of the portrait in TFA are good, and should be celebrated.
posted by riotnrrd at 1:43 PM on January 24 [8 favorites]
That Titus Kaphar painting is quite the powerful statement.
posted by May Kasahara at 1:43 PM on January 24 [10 favorites]
posted by May Kasahara at 1:43 PM on January 24 [10 favorites]
Working on a post about Titus Kaphar for tomorrow.... I didn't want to make a post about him that was really a post about this painting of Yale, for obvious reasons....
posted by bq at 1:51 PM on January 24 [7 favorites]
posted by bq at 1:51 PM on January 24 [7 favorites]
I’d never seen or heard about the Kaphar piece, and am now SUPER keen to read your next post, bq. So much portraiture is completely uninteresting to me because of the banality of subjects’ faces and poses: the expression here feels complex and compelling, and I feel excited to learn more. Many thanks.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:09 PM on January 24
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:09 PM on January 24
Yale renamed Calhoun College residential hall five years ago. Yale's actively reckoning with its awful past and.. that's bad? I don't understand the implicit criticism in either of these comments. I think both the renaming of Calhoun as well as the analysis and removal of the portrait in TFA are good, and should be celebrated.
That should be celebrated, but the question for our age is: how do you celebrate incremental progress while still reminding everyone that there's much more that needs to be done? How do you respectfully acknowledge that someone is sincerely Doing Something while still keeping the pressure on for them to Do More? How do congratulate effort without the risk of the effort becoming self-congratulatory?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:25 PM on January 24 [8 favorites]
That should be celebrated, but the question for our age is: how do you celebrate incremental progress while still reminding everyone that there's much more that needs to be done? How do you respectfully acknowledge that someone is sincerely Doing Something while still keeping the pressure on for them to Do More? How do congratulate effort without the risk of the effort becoming self-congratulatory?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:25 PM on January 24 [8 favorites]
I expect that Yale would be able to acquire Kaphar’s painting to display alongside the original, if it were so inclined.
Personally, I'd be happy to see the painting renamed something like An Enslaved Eight-Year-Old and His Elite Abusers, but that's probably still a bridge too far.
posted by praemunire at 2:47 PM on January 24 [9 favorites]
Personally, I'd be happy to see the painting renamed something like An Enslaved Eight-Year-Old and His Elite Abusers, but that's probably still a bridge too far.
posted by praemunire at 2:47 PM on January 24 [9 favorites]
I don’t know the answer to that, but it sure as shit isn’t the miserablist-sad-trombone-fart-of-celebration that crushes as much joy as possible while acknowledging progress. “I guess it’s good you’re less shitty now, you shitty people” is destructive nonsense, and yet remains a very popular song. Sometimes I have seen people walk the line well, but it’s hard.
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:48 PM on January 24 [6 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:48 PM on January 24 [6 favorites]
Yeah, bluntly, we knew Calhoun College was wrong in the 90s and it still took some thirty years to get the name changed--and this after an initial study by the university that endorsed keeping the name. (I have a personal theory that it was Sasha and Malia coming of college age that prodded it along, but I have no direct evidence for this.) I am extremely proud of the young people who got that done and glad to have them as fellow alums.
posted by praemunire at 2:50 PM on January 24 [4 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 2:50 PM on January 24 [4 favorites]
...a well-known and often violently enforced state of what historians don't want to admit or describe as actual slavery.
There. FTFY.
Let's not dance around it.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:52 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]
You think that historians of the present day are afraid to talk about slavery? The issue is attempting to describe a state that was not, unlike in chattel slavery elsewhere at the time, legally defined and enforceable (and inheritable). That doesn't mean it was any more morally acceptable but it does mean it functioned somewhat differently. The experience of an enslaved person on a Virginia tobacco plantation or a Carolina rice plantation would be, in both formal and informal ways, different from this poor child's. Attempts to depict a complex phenomenon with a fine grain are not necessarily whitewashing. Chattel slavery distorted every society it touched in some way, producing eerie results.
posted by praemunire at 2:59 PM on January 24 [7 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 2:59 PM on January 24 [7 favorites]
Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, Calhoun College was renamed to honor Grace Murray Hopper, a mathematician who made significant contributions to the development of computer languages.
posted by carmicha at 5:59 PM on January 24 [3 favorites]
posted by carmicha at 5:59 PM on January 24 [3 favorites]
Displaying the Kaphar painting next to this one would be an excellent idea.
There's a fine historical novel that also explores the politics behind the presence of enslaved black children in eighteenth-century painting, David Dabydeen's The Harlot's Progress (imagining the afterlife of the page in the second plate of the Hogarth sequence).
posted by thomas j wise at 6:06 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]
There's a fine historical novel that also explores the politics behind the presence of enslaved black children in eighteenth-century painting, David Dabydeen's The Harlot's Progress (imagining the afterlife of the page in the second plate of the Hogarth sequence).
posted by thomas j wise at 6:06 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]
A while ago I entered a college library in Pennsylvania, at a school founded by prominent figures of the Revolution, one of whom was an abolitionist and the other of whom came around on the idea so I will give them the level of credit due to that. However, a prominent later alumnus of the school was one of America's extremely bad presidents from the 1850s and I noticed that they had a painting of him in one of the main stairwells. If you didn't know who it was and were judging just on the merits of being a painting of some guy, it was a good painting but knowing who it was, I would have been embarrassed to be displaying it in any context other than either storage or in some discussion of why perhaps we shouldn't have elected that guy. Not long later, I noticed it was gone, and asked the librarians about it; they said it was removed due to anticipated physical maintenance of the building, but it's been long gone enough that I wonder if they were hoping just to quietly have it go away without attracting controversy of any kind.
I think there can be something to be said for using artwork as part of an educational program but it needs to be intentional. I like thomas j wise's idea of displaying the two paintings together. Long rambling paragraph to come to this conclusion but there I am.
posted by Whale Oil at 7:31 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]
I think there can be something to be said for using artwork as part of an educational program but it needs to be intentional. I like thomas j wise's idea of displaying the two paintings together. Long rambling paragraph to come to this conclusion but there I am.
posted by Whale Oil at 7:31 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]
Appropriately contextualized in a museum is exactly where this painting belongs. The move to topple images of people who've worked particularly great evil from places of honor does not, contrary to what some claim, mean suppressing history.
posted by praemunire at 8:01 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 8:01 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]
The move to topple images of people who've worked particularly great evil from places of honor does not, contrary to what some claim, mean suppressing history.
when you put it that way,
the trouble is always: the person represented in the painting/sculpture is not necessarily representative of great evil to some. are US Americans ready to look closely at George Washington to see if he passes the smell test? in Canada, John A. Macdonald is getting his share of scrutiny, primarily for his words and views on Indigenous and Metis peoples. These attitudes resulted in actions that have been characterized as genocidal. But you tear down a John A. statue, let me tell you: not all Canadians accept that he represented "great evil."
Personally, I am not fighting to tear down John A. statues. I'm certainly not fighting to preserve any statues either, it's conveniently hypothetical for me. I think the conversation can start with the worst of them but eventually you will arrive at paintings/statues where debate will commence. The climate of debate is not ideal in North America, I'd say the long fingers of colonialism are still deeply wrapped into our guts.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:11 AM on January 25
when you put it that way,
the trouble is always: the person represented in the painting/sculpture is not necessarily representative of great evil to some. are US Americans ready to look closely at George Washington to see if he passes the smell test? in Canada, John A. Macdonald is getting his share of scrutiny, primarily for his words and views on Indigenous and Metis peoples. These attitudes resulted in actions that have been characterized as genocidal. But you tear down a John A. statue, let me tell you: not all Canadians accept that he represented "great evil."
Personally, I am not fighting to tear down John A. statues. I'm certainly not fighting to preserve any statues either, it's conveniently hypothetical for me. I think the conversation can start with the worst of them but eventually you will arrive at paintings/statues where debate will commence. The climate of debate is not ideal in North America, I'd say the long fingers of colonialism are still deeply wrapped into our guts.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:11 AM on January 25
the trouble is always: the person represented in the painting/sculpture is not necessarily representative of great evil to some.
Yep. So what? This is an argument that can be applied to any action opposing evil. I'm not sure why you're calling this hypothetical; what do you think was going on when they took down a bunch of Confederate statues and renamed a bunch of military bases in the last five years?
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on January 25
Yep. So what? This is an argument that can be applied to any action opposing evil. I'm not sure why you're calling this hypothetical; what do you think was going on when they took down a bunch of Confederate statues and renamed a bunch of military bases in the last five years?
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on January 25
I'm calling a specific example hypothetical: I don't live near any John A. Macdonald statues, and if I did I don't think I'd go out of my way to get a statue of John A. torn down. I would not begrudge someone else tearing a John A. statue down. I'm using this as an example of what it means when the statue/art does not universally represent "great evil." The Confederate examples aren't something I can speak to as a non-USian. It doesn't make sense to me, it feels like the war never really ended and despite the defeat of Confederate forces everything they represented still seems quite prominent in the US.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:49 AM on January 25
posted by elkevelvet at 9:49 AM on January 25
The Confederate examples aren't something I can speak to as a non-USian. It doesn't make sense to me, it feels like the war never really ended and despite the defeat of Confederate forces everything they represented still seems quite prominent in the US.
And Confederate statuary was part of that. Those statues were put up to send a message to people.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:34 AM on January 25 [4 favorites]
And Confederate statuary was part of that. Those statues were put up to send a message to people.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:34 AM on January 25 [4 favorites]
It doesn't make sense to me, it feels like the war never really ended and despite the defeat of Confederate forces everything they represented still seems quite prominent in the US.
Hence the current effort to get rid of prominent Confederate representations, like tearing down statues and renaming military bases.
I think the conversation can start with the worst of them but eventually you will arrive at paintings/statues where debate will commence.
You're assuming though that there's only ever going to be a single review about whether to accept or get rid of problematic symbols of our past. The review is always ongoing as we confront our history and how it has shaped us, and it will continue as we are succeeded by future generations. Maybe today someone like Washington or Jefferson gets a pass, but there might come a day when the decision to remove their statues might be as clear cut as the one to remove Confederate ones.
I'm rather fond of that very early XKCD comic: "We're grown-ups now. And it's our turn to decide what that means". As little as a decade ago, removing Confederate statues was unthinkable. Now it's happening. Maybe future generations will realize that the America originally created by Washington and Jefferson has been so thoroughly reinvented by those who came after them that they no longer deserve as prominent a place of honor. And given all the horrors being unleashed from "originalist" interpretations of the Constitution, maybe that day can't come soon enough. I'd much rather live in the America created by FDR and MLK than the America created by Washington and Jefferson.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:35 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]
Hence the current effort to get rid of prominent Confederate representations, like tearing down statues and renaming military bases.
I think the conversation can start with the worst of them but eventually you will arrive at paintings/statues where debate will commence.
You're assuming though that there's only ever going to be a single review about whether to accept or get rid of problematic symbols of our past. The review is always ongoing as we confront our history and how it has shaped us, and it will continue as we are succeeded by future generations. Maybe today someone like Washington or Jefferson gets a pass, but there might come a day when the decision to remove their statues might be as clear cut as the one to remove Confederate ones.
I'm rather fond of that very early XKCD comic: "We're grown-ups now. And it's our turn to decide what that means". As little as a decade ago, removing Confederate statues was unthinkable. Now it's happening. Maybe future generations will realize that the America originally created by Washington and Jefferson has been so thoroughly reinvented by those who came after them that they no longer deserve as prominent a place of honor. And given all the horrors being unleashed from "originalist" interpretations of the Constitution, maybe that day can't come soon enough. I'd much rather live in the America created by FDR and MLK than the America created by Washington and Jefferson.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:35 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]
I'm using this as an example of what it means when the statue/art does not universally represent "great evil."
There is never an absolute consensus on these points. There are people out there who will tell you that Hitler was right.
posted by praemunire at 12:58 PM on January 25
There is never an absolute consensus on these points. There are people out there who will tell you that Hitler was right.
posted by praemunire at 12:58 PM on January 25
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