For me, it has never been a question or even a secret that I was destined for the arts. I grew up in a city that gave me boundless opportunities to appreciate and learn about form But, as a young black woman pursuing a career in the Museum field, I have always been aware that the path I forge is paved by points of intersection– intersections between my personal and my professional identities. For me, these two are inextricably bound together as I initially began pursuing my major in Art History from a personal position and as the practical experiences I have pursued in my subsequent years at Smith demonstrate I have deeply committed myself to understanding how institutions deploy diversity.

Blink 182’s “I miss you” connects to my research in that it is a song that speaks about the ways in which the past, the spectral nature of ghosts and silenced presences haunts the present. It speaks to the imaginary and fragmentary nature of memory as well. Each of these themes are recounted in the work the artist I research negotiates in her series Zabat (1989). Maud Sulter’s project is largely an imaginative project that seeks to re-constitute the narratives and images of black women in the unified visual plane of the photograph. She works as an investigator, an archivist, and as a black woman who is deeply concerned with the marginalization and erasure of the achievements of black women artists and cultural commentators. As she actively engages with the past, Sulter uncovers narratives lost and foregrounds them by placing them at the center of the pictorial plane. She summons these revenants of the past to remind the present of its ethical responsibilities to the past and future; namely, that we must not forget the cultural achievements and personal narratives of the marginalized.

Working at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC this past summer provided me with a wonderful learning experience that has positively changed the trajectory of my interests in the museum field. I began my internship on a balmy day in early June. On this day, I met my supervisor and Smith alumna Geri Provost Lyons, and received my assignment as her intern in Docent and Intern Programs a division within the Portrait Gallery’s Education department. My responsibilities for this project varied greatly: certain days I was tasked with organizing enrichment activities for the summer interns as a way of cohort building; other days I assisted Geri in observing docent tours. This particular responsibility was enforced to help Geri with her goal of diversifying and revitalizing the museum’s docent core.

Being able to work alongside my supervisor on two projects was an extremely valuable experience because it not only bridged my interests in arts administration and museum education, it provided me with the opportunity to navigate between two realms; the first being the realm of the office– a space that is regulated, efficient, and cold; the second being the galleries of the Portrait Gallery– spaces that are permeated by the presence of inquiring and eager museum goers. Navigating two spaces afforded me a certain degree of museum literacy that I could not have gained by working in one department. And by the end of this experience, I learned that the administrative work I did in the office greatly informed operations in the museum. For example, the

The guiding question that I continuously sought to answer over the course of this summer was, “Why do these artists [Maud Sulter and Awol Erziku] appropriate and reinterpret European portrait iconography to comment on the exculsion of black women in the cannon of art history?” This question not only defines the extensive two year research project I began for my Mellon Mays Fellowship, it informs the ways in which I approach and analyze art by artists of color. I am interested in how artists on the periphery centralize their artistic statements and philosophies in political and self-determined ways to critique practices of erasure in the canon.

To delve into this research, I began by participating in a five week intensive research training program hosted by Bowdoin College. The goal of this experience was to educate fellows from Bowdoin, Smith, and the University of Witswaterstrand in South Africa, on research methodologies and how to articulate our thoughts in a genre of writing regarded as a prospectus. My preliminary research findings for my prospectus were gathered mostly from sources found in Bowdoin’s archival and library materials, as well as dissertations. As I continued further into my research, I found that it is unique in that the interventions I am making have not yet been made in academia; that is to say, the artists I am researching have not been discussed in sustained scholarship within the art historical discipline. This fact really inspired me when conducting my research, and over the course of the five weeks helped sustain me and encourage me when I felt mentally exhausted and at an intellectual road block.

I would say that the road blocks I faced when participating in this experience stemmed mostly from the fact that I was the only resident expert in my field and area of interests, and because of this finding help was challenging, especially when my mentor was unavailable. I was able to overcome these challenges by finding professors and museum staff on campus to discuss my project with, and by doing so I was able to flesh out my work and reach new conslusions that I would not have come across by myself. I found that it was beneficial to have conversations with individuals with different perspectives and from multiple disciplines about my research because these conversations helped me find new approaches to my reserach that I had not previously thought of.

Generally speaking, this experience was wonderful not only because I had an opportunity to begin my work, present my intial reserach findings, and culminate the experience with a tangible reflection of my work, it was also beneficial because I had an opportunity to engage in cross cultural exchange with students from around the world and learn new angles that I can bring to my research such as introducing black feminist theory into my work.

Tattered and Torn depicts the singular figure of an elderly African American woman standing in the foreground of the painting. She wears a ragged shawl and tattered skirt, and holds a small wooden pipe in her hand. Behind her, sit two elderly men cast in the dark shadows of the room. The only source of light, streams in from a small paned window in the background. It pools around the elderly woman, drawing the viewers gaze directly to her.

I first interacted with this work of art from the SCMA, during a visit with my mother, and then again as a Student Museum Educator in a discussion with my peers. This painting has come to have great significance for me. It embodies my interests in the representation and presence of African American subjects in museum spaces. This is because the painting has an African American subject as the main protagonist of  its narrative. Tattered and Torn is one of a select few works of art from the SCMA’s collection on view that has an African American subject as its primary focus. For this reason, this painting serves as a constant reminder for why I want to pursue a career in the museum field. As a young Black woman interested in art and its histories, I feel it is important to make sure all under represented communities– whether that is artists of color or non-white subjects of paintings, or various populations of museum visitors– have a platform in museums to share their personal experiences and express their unique heritages.

History, especially American history, is not linear and to separate African American history, culture, visual production from it is a grave injustice. These beliefs motivate me to want to be involved in this concentration and the SCMA, because both areanas are under represented.