b'on viewARCHIVAL TREASURES: REPRESENTING BLACK SUBJECTS MARCH 8JULY 14, 2019BLACKNESS PERMEATES THE CULTURE OF THEconcept that contains multitudes. archival treasures is an United States. It permeates culture, period. Imagesexploration of that multiplicity in its expansiveness and of black folks are ubiquitous and their impact on thecontradictions, offering a spectrum of images without way people are able to exist in the world cannot betrying to make any definitive statement about what itoverstated. Black culture has been absorbed into themeans to be black. This is both an installation and an American mainstream and works to shape popular act of careit seeks to provide an experience: to allow culture internationallybut while black cultural pro- the viewer space to consider the power of these objects, duction is celebrated, appropriated and capitalized on,their subjects and their own ways of looking. It is a black people continue to suffer the consequences ofreclamation, a celebration and a meditation on how centuries of misrepresentation. more expansive representation can perhaps do some What does it mean to look at an image? Andof the work of mitigating its burden.what do we take for granted? Visual culture plays a significantole in the way we understand ourselves and[.] if you have received no clear-cut impression each other, and is a powerful means of disseminating thatof what the Negro in America is like, then you are 24 information on a global scale. The ways marginalizedin the same place with me. There is no The Negro people are depicted in dominant culture heavily infl - here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudeence our day-to-day lives. archival treasures centers blackso varied, appearances and capabilities so different, subjects within the museums collection in an attemptthat there is no possible classification so catholic thato highlight not only physical representations of blackit will cover us all, except My people! My people!people, but the interiority and lived experiences ofZora Neale Hurston, blackness that so rarely surface in the mainstream. Dust Tracks on a Road Blackness is no singular thing. It cannot beThis exhibition was made possible by the Louise Walker Blaney,condensed or distilledit is as broad as it is specific, a class of 1939, Fund for Exhibitions.above:Installation view of the exhibition organized by Shanice Bailey 17, Brown/Conway post-baccalaureate curatorial fellowon view \\ archival treasures: representing black subjects'