Identity and Diversity in Art History
"Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people."
(Keith Haring, American Pop artist)
Until the late-20th and early-21st Centuries, the History of Art focused scholarly attention primarily on white, male, heterosexual artists. Consequently, the stories of innumerable artists across a spectrum of backgrounds were overlooked, erased, or forgotten. More efforts have been taken to expand the scope of who is included in the History of Art canon as art historians, art critics, and curators utilize their positions to transform the discipline into a more inclusive field of study. “Identity and Diversity” is a Special Collection that features the works of painters, illustrators, and printmakers who comprise an exceptionally diverse range of cultural identities. The collection will be divided into three main subsections that highlight the artistic contributions of Women Artists, Artists of Colour, and LGBTQ+ Artists. As a way to introduce today’s viewers to a rich selection of creative figures, this continually growing collection will represent diverse artists across all major and minor art movements, styles, and historical periods: from Dutch Baroque still-life painter Clara Peeters and African-American portraitist Joshua Johnson, to gay British-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon and Contemporary South Korean artist Myonghi Kang.
Curated and edited by Liam Otero
Artists of Colour
"One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person … There are fewer representations of black people in the historical record …"
(Kerry James Marshall, African-American Contemporary Figurative painter)
Global Art History considers the creation of art in all world cultures across millennia. In the 18th Century, the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717 - 1768) developed the History of Art into an academic field. However, his biased preferences for the whiteness and idealized forms of Classical Greek and Roman statuary influenced generations of art historians to express blatantly racist perceptions toward art produced by non-white artists. Consequently, scholarly attention on the arts of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australasia were largely ignored for hundreds of years. Moreover, Western imperialist ambitions from the 15th - 20th Centuries further contributed to the lack of representation of non-white artists.
From the Spanish destruction of Aztec religious and ceremonial sites to the British theft of African bronze sculptures, entire histories and cultures were erased or stripped of their native identities. Even when persons of colour were selected as subjects in an artwork created by a white artist, the subject was relegated to either servile, stereotypical, or villainizing depictions as seen in Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), Johannes Mytens’s Portrait of Margaretha van Raephorst (1668), and E. Irving Couse’s The Captive (1891).
Over the last few decades, the History of Art has become more inclusive of artists from an array of national, ethnic, and cultural identities. Countless university and graduate programs now offer courses and concentrations in non-Western Art History (e.g. Asian Art Humanities at Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London). A significant number of museums and galleries have expanded their collections to incorporate the works of artists of colour alongside their white contemporaries, and museums dedicated to preserving these world histories have been established (Asian Art Museum, Africa Museum, Aga Khan Museum, etc.). Additionally, prestigious institutions such as The British Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art have engaged in repatriation, a practice that involves returning stolen or illegally purchased art and artifacts to the cultures, nations, and/or groups of people to whom they originally belonged.
The objective of this exhibition is to present an ever-growing collection of works by artists from all races and the contributions they have and continue to make in Global Art History. In addition to historical artists from much older periods, the curation of this exhibition will ensure an up-to-date spotlighting of today’s artists of colour. The boundless range of featured artists will assist in transforming the Art History canon into a more inclusive discipline that celebrates diversity and recognizes art’s ability to promote equality amongst all peoples.
Text by Liam Otero