The Smithsonian art exhibition is “ divide ” or `revealer ” – It depends on who you ask: NPR

Every day, there are hundreds of different exhibitions in the many museums of the Smithsonian. But a recent executive decree of the White House deleted one.

The form of power: stories of race and sculpture At the Smithsonian American Art Museum shows 82 works of art from 70 artists, covering about three centuries from the late 1700 to the present day.

Historical statues are placed in a context that sheds new light on their meaning. Contemporary sculptures reflect on current questions.

While the executive decree claims that the exhibition is an example of the way in which the Smithsonian has “been the subject of an influence of an ideology divisor and centered on the race”, visitors and criticism see a collection which probes historical representation, stereotypes and identity.

We examine three works that are used to examine the American perceptions of the breed at different times in history.

“Pioneer Woman” is used to celebrating a rush to the land

In the 1920s, at a time when sexy flashes and smoking cigarettes were in vogue, but most of the monuments were for men, the oil man Ew Marland led a competition to honor the women “who married their men and left them on their conquest of the West”. He said that with this new monument, he hoped “to preserve for the children of our children the history of combat and work and courage of our mothers”.

The winning design of the sculptor Bryant Baker was unveiled during a large ceremony in Ponca City, in Okla., In 1930. The day’s festivities included a competition commemorating the land of 1889 and 1893. Tens of thousands of white settlers were authorized to claim land previously put in the government for the Amerindian trees after being granted by their jam South of the South.

According to The shape of power Catalog, the Baker’s statue of an unshakable white woman “supports the ideology of manifest destiny which affirmed that the earth now known as the United States was ordered by God to belong to white Christians”.

Smithsonian curators were not available to comment, but the catalog relied on the research of Cynthia Prescott, author of Pioneer mother monuments. She tells NPR that the exhibition “tries to understand and unpack this more complicated and racialized meaning for this work of art … and to reveal it) to her audience”.

Prescott believes that it is “the basic idea and the impulse against which the decree repels”.

The White House did not respond to the request for NPR comments on this story.

Use art to create a “tangible connection between people”

As a Puerto Rican who grew poor in Philadelphia, artist Roberto Lugo sought the elimination of the land that belonged to his ancestors. His sculpture The DNA study is revisited is a colored self -portrait and full -size size made from a mold of his body when he was 100 pounds heavier than now.

“Many of us have grown up in food deserts and places where obesity was very common due to the lack of quality of food,” said Lugo. “So when I make a room like this, I like to allow me to be vulnerable and let everything go out, because then everyone around you also allows themselves to be vulnerable.”

Lugo believes that “art has the ability to do things that words cannot”, especially when it comes to bringing people together from different backgrounds and political beliefs. Including whites.

“I think that for many people who support Trump, I think they feel deprived of their rights and (that) their quality of life suffers because they have no opportunities because of their race,” said Lugo. “I have the impression that this should be a point where we connect with each other. This is exactly what people of color feel.”

“Revealing” opportunities for growth

Jilian Vallade, who is black, visited the art museum and said it had been struck by Girl SkatingA sculpture of 1906 by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle who was known to portray poor immigrants in his district of Lower Manhattan. The girl slides on a roller skate, her arms extended, creaking with joy and fear.

The exhibition stresses that at the time, Italian, eastern and Jewish immigrants were often not considered white.

“What many go to the southern seas to find, I found there,” said Eberle in 1937. “People who were just apart from me to act as symbols, but close enough to feel their common humanity.”

Vallade said that she had not realized that the whites had also been “otherwise” – she had found the works The shape of power revealing and “an opportunity to see another point of view” and “question your own prejudices”.

The shape of power is visible at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in mid-September.

Audio and Digital Story published by Jennifer Vanasco. Audio mixed by Chloee Weiner.