“Counter-Narratives: (Re)presenting Race & Ethnicity,” January 18 through July 10, 2022 in Olin Library’s Thomas Gallery. This exhibition co-curated by Jessi Cerruti and Geoff Ward, examines how objects preserved and collected through archives and museums construct narratives of race and ethnicity, and how counter-narratives emerge through contemporary artwork and critical interpretation of historic objects.
Among the (counter)narratives the exhibition explores is the relationship between our institution and the history and legacy of slavery. A series of portraits subverts and expands the familiar focus on the anti-slavery position of William Greenleaf Eliot, spotlighting early pro-slavery institutional leaders and benefactors - including John O’Fallon, Henry Shaw, Wayman Crow, and others - and putting this counter-narrative in dialogue with similar acts of revision, recontextualization and reckoning taking place in contemporary art.
For more about the exhibition click here.
Pictured: Henry Shaw, 1860 U.S. Census –Slave Schedules, St. Louis Township; Henry Shaw, Photograph by J.A. Scholten, ca.1882. Courtesy Missouri Historical Society. Photo composite by Ian Lanius.
