Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux created one of the best known European sculptures of an enslaved woman in the 19th Century. Called “Why Born Enslaved!,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has an 1873 carving of the 1868 bust. While the sculpture clearly has an antislavery message and was received as an abolitionist work, the Met’s notes on the piece say the “bust also perpetuates a Western tradition of representation that long saw the Black figure as inseparable from the ropes and chains of enslavement.” This can be seen below.
The Financial Times reports that the Met is changing its display of “Why Born Enslaved!” Here are some excerpts from its article:
The Met purchased an 1873 version of this exquisite, discomfiting marble bust in 2019, and initially stashed it among other Carpeaux works. For a while, it stood next to “Ugolino and His Sons,” a horrific of vision of captivity ending in cannibalism. But the Petrie European Sculpture Court, a glassed-in sunlit glade, exerted a prettifying effect on all that ugly subject matter. Misery, captivity, hunger and violence were coated in a veneer of aesthetic gentility. On this occasion, “Why Born Enslaved!” has migrated from that too-pleasant place into a dark hall between the medieval sculpture gallery and the Lehman wing. The new location represents a broader change of context. Curators Elyse Nelson and Wendy S Walters have surrounded that single piece with studies, artefacts, artwork and text, all marshalled to support their case that this one white man’s work helped shape the way black history is understood.
…The Met’s show is a masterclass in presenting complicated, troubling art because it finds a reasonable middle ground between lionising the prophet and trashing the sinner. It places Carpeaux in his time, confronts his blind spots and savours his gifts, all without staking out extreme positions. And because the exhibition is judicious and thoughtful, it also invites argument.
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