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Fighting for Freedom
92 Plays7 months ago
This episode brings two Curious Objects veterans and one first-timer back to the show to discuss the groundbreaking exhibition they've curated, Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence. Our object is a fine neoclassical table made in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1819, by a firm where enslaved cabinetmaker James worked. Ben and his guests explore some of the misconceptions around enslaved craftspeople, the complicated relationships they often had with their enslavers, and what this table can tell us about all of it.
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Transcript
Overlooking Black American Decorative Arts
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:13
Speaker
This is the podcast about art, decorative arts, and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
00:00:21
Speaker
Now this comes up pretty often on this show.
00:00:24
Speaker
The fact that Black American decorative arts have often been overlooked.
00:00:28
Speaker
They don't always fit neatly into established narratives.
00:00:32
Speaker
The scholarship around it can pose unique challenges, and until recently the whole category has often just been frankly dismissed by many scholars and collectors and dealers.
Resurgence of Interest in Black Craftspeople
00:00:44
Speaker
But times change, and the last few years have seen a surge of interest in Black American craftspeople.
00:00:52
Speaker
Now as a dealer, I see this in the marketplace with, for example, pieces of silver by black silversmith Peter Benson, which suddenly achieve auction results 10 times higher than what they might have made a few years ago.
00:01:07
Speaker
We've talked about these trends on curious objects before, and they're clear, not just in the market, but also in journals, publications, exhibitions, where we've seen this explosion of interest.
00:01:19
Speaker
And now, just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, there's a new exhibition called Fighting for Freedom, Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's organized by the Daughters of the American Revolution in partnership with the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive.
00:01:37
Speaker
You can see it now at the Daughters of the American Revolution, and over the next few years it's going to travel to numerous museums across the country.
Fighting for Freedom Exhibition Launches
00:01:45
Speaker
And if you're a long time Curious Objects listener, you will recognize some of the folks involved.
00:01:50
Speaker
The editors of the exhibition catalog are Torin Gatson, assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who came on Curious Objects previously to talk about a North Carolina fireback.
00:02:03
Speaker
There's Tiffany Moeman, who's been on Curious Objects before discussing a very unusual chair from Louisiana, which is actually included in this exhibition.
00:02:13
Speaker
And there's William Strolo, curator of exhibitions at the DAR, who has never before been on Curious Objects, but I'm thrilled to welcome him and all three of them to join me today.
00:02:23
Speaker
So William, welcome.
00:02:24
Speaker
And Torrin and Tiffany, welcome back to Curious Objects.
Favorite Exhibition Pieces Discussed
00:02:28
Speaker
Hi, thanks for having us.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yes, thank you.
00:02:31
Speaker
Glad to be here.
00:02:32
Speaker
So I don't normally have three guests at the same time.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I think the usual rapid fire questions would just be chaos.
00:02:39
Speaker
Plus we have a lot to get to and talk about.
00:02:42
Speaker
So instead, let me just ask each of you for starters to tell us in just 30 seconds or so about the one object that you're personally most happy or most excited to have been able to include in this exhibition.
00:02:56
Speaker
And maybe we can start with you, Tiffany.
00:02:58
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:59
Speaker
So the object that I am most in love with in the exhibition is, of course, the bid made by a cabinetmaker named Lewis Buckner from Sevier County, Tennessee.
00:03:09
Speaker
The bid has a date on it of 1889.
00:03:12
Speaker
But what I love most about this bid is, well, number one, I'm a native Tennessean.
00:03:16
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:03:17
Speaker
Two, it is, it's beautiful.
00:03:19
Speaker
It is one of the most gorgeous beds I have ever seen.
00:03:23
Speaker
And the way that Buckner went about making this bed with all of its engravings from his extensive use of a punch to get shapes into the bed.
00:03:34
Speaker
It's, it's, it's just beautiful.
00:03:35
Speaker
And when you, when you take a look at it, it is a showstopper for sure.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely eye-catching.
00:03:40
Speaker
What about you, Torrin?
00:03:42
Speaker
For me, it would be a small, but as I identify, mighty daguerreotype, so a small image of a young white sitter.
00:03:54
Speaker
And the
Augustus Washington's Photography and American History
00:03:56
Speaker
photo was captured by a man named Augustus Washington.
00:04:01
Speaker
And so Augustus Washington is...
00:04:03
Speaker
probably one of the most preeminent folks in America who does not necessarily have the acclaim.
00:04:10
Speaker
And so Augustus Washington grows up in the North, is educated in part at Dartmouth College, but ends up leaving the university because they were unable to pay for tuition and through a series of events gets into taking photographs.
00:04:29
Speaker
And so this image,
00:04:31
Speaker
that is captured shows Augustus Washington not only as an entrepreneur and a business owner, but it also kind of through a window gleans into the more monumental impact because Augustus Washington, believe it or not, is actually the person who captured the very famous stills of John Brown, which are currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery in his four-print still.
00:04:57
Speaker
And so
00:04:59
Speaker
while people know of that image, they don't necessarily know about who took it.
00:05:04
Speaker
And for us to be able to highlight Augustus Washington and all of his work and the work that we have, which is featured on display, actually has his stamped gallery just inside on red velvet.
00:05:18
Speaker
This is Washington Gallery.
00:05:20
Speaker
So for me, it's a story that opens up and blossoms into a lot of what is American history.
Farewell to Producer and Listener Engagement
00:05:29
Speaker
Gosh, that's fantastic.
00:05:31
Speaker
How about you, William?
00:05:32
Speaker
I think for me, one of the pieces that's very interesting in the show is the armoire we have on loan from the historic New Orleans collection made by Dutraud Bourgeon, who is a Haitian refugee who comes to New Orleans and learns the cabinet making trade from another country.
00:05:51
Speaker
cabinetmaker of color and you know the construction inside of it is fascinating looking at you know how barjon measured out the piece marked it up um where i mean all the various elements go together based on on how he kind of methodically planned this piece out and just the elegance overall elegance of it it's a massive it's a large armoire and then also that you know i think it's interesting that he's coming to america
00:06:17
Speaker
and is being taught by another cabinetmaker of color.
00:06:20
Speaker
And he then takes that tradition and passes it on to his son, who then takes up the trade after he leaves the country and goes to Paris.
00:06:31
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:06:32
Speaker
Well, those are all great objects, and I am very excited to get to today's specific curious objects.
00:06:39
Speaker
But first, just a couple of quick notes.
00:06:41
Speaker
Music
00:06:44
Speaker
I am devastated to be bidding Adia to my longtime producer and editor, Sammy Delati.
00:06:52
Speaker
Sammy was there at the very first meeting we ever had about creating this show before it was even called Curious Objects.
00:06:59
Speaker
And he has been a central part of bringing it to life and shepherding through all these years and all these many, many episodes.
00:07:09
Speaker
Sammy, you've made me and my guests sound much better than we had any right to, and I couldn't have done it without you.
00:07:16
Speaker
So wishing you all the best with your next chapter.
00:07:20
Speaker
Listeners, I want to say thank you to you also for listening, whether this is your first ever episode or your hundredth.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yes, we're well over a hundred episodes now.
00:07:31
Speaker
Your energy is what keeps this show alive and, frankly, what makes it fun for me to do.
00:07:38
Speaker
And I love to hear from you, whether that's on Instagram at Objective Interest or via email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
00:07:47
Speaker
I'm afraid our responses have been a little slower than usual lately, but we're doing our best to catch up, so please keep those messages coming.
00:07:54
Speaker
I love to hear your thoughts.
History of a Virginia Breakfast Table
00:07:56
Speaker
Also, if you'd like to support the show, we don't ask for money, but the ratings and reviews that you leave us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify especially are, well, they're both lovely to read and also helpful for convincing the algorithms to send us new listeners.
00:08:13
Speaker
So thank you very much for that.
00:08:19
Speaker
Now, our curious object today is a table.
00:08:23
Speaker
It's a breakfast table.
00:08:25
Speaker
And for starters, I wonder if one of you can tell me what makes a table a breakfast table.
00:08:31
Speaker
This particular table is what we call a Pembroke table.
00:08:36
Speaker
And if you were to stand in front of it, the tabletop is in...
00:08:42
Speaker
three pieces.
00:08:42
Speaker
So you have this central slab on top and then the two sides that fold down.
00:08:47
Speaker
And then they are supported underneath to be held up by these wedges.
00:08:53
Speaker
So these pieces hinge out and then hold the sides of the tabletop up.
00:08:59
Speaker
And it rests on these four long legs that end in this Terry Paul foot, this claw foot with casters underneath of it.
00:09:09
Speaker
And in between there are pillars that hold up the tabletop from the legs.
00:09:14
Speaker
Right.
00:09:14
Speaker
So this table was made in Virginia.
00:09:17
Speaker
And tell me, what are the elements of it, the material, the style, construction that can point toward that Virginia origin?
00:09:28
Speaker
So the table was made in Norfolk around 1819, and the woods consist of mahogany, poplar, white pine, and sycamore.
00:09:36
Speaker
It's also painted green and has some gold gilt in it as well.
00:09:41
Speaker
And we know that this comes from a shop in Virginia because of the archival record.
00:09:47
Speaker
So that really is the telling fact for us here that the table was made in the shop of James Woodward and was... Hold on, I'm blinking on the name now.
00:09:56
Speaker
Tiffany, do you remember offhand?
00:09:58
Speaker
It was sold to Humberston Skipwith.
00:10:01
Speaker
And he lived in.
00:10:04
Speaker
Right.
00:10:07
Speaker
And he lived on the Prestwood plantation in Mecklenburg County.
00:10:12
Speaker
And so he gets a suite of furniture from James Woodward and it included this table.
00:10:16
Speaker
Right.
James Woodward and Workshop Complexities
00:10:17
Speaker
So we're talking about Norfolk, Virginia, right in 1819.
00:10:21
Speaker
Right.
00:10:23
Speaker
So tell me about this James Woodward cabinetmaker.
00:10:27
Speaker
What do we know about his business and the shop that he was running?
00:10:30
Speaker
Well, we know a lot about him actually, thanks to research from various scholars over the years.
00:10:36
Speaker
And so James Woodward was one of the most prolific cabinet makers there in Norfolk in that time period.
00:10:43
Speaker
And, you know, his shop was massive.
00:10:46
Speaker
It was so massive that when he passed away in 1839, there were over 125 pieces of furniture in his inventory.
00:10:56
Speaker
So we know that this is a very large operation.
00:10:59
Speaker
We know that he starts making furniture in the neoclassical style early on in his career and that he's providing furniture to some of the best folks, the best, I'll say, more well-to-known folks there.
00:11:14
Speaker
in Norfolk.
00:11:15
Speaker
And what we know is that he also used enslaved labor in his shop, and that points directly to the labor of an enslaved cabinetmaker named James, who is one of the many hands that contributed to this table.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, so I want to get to James here in just a second.
00:11:33
Speaker
And first, I'm just curious, you mentioned that we know that this table came from this shop in 1819, and we know the very unusual name of the person who bought it.
00:11:46
Speaker
It's quite uncommon to have that kind of documentation with a piece of furniture from this period, isn't it?
00:11:52
Speaker
Oh, for sure.
00:11:53
Speaker
And yeah, that's not something that you see very often.
00:11:58
Speaker
But with that documentation and with a comparison of this particular table to other furniture pieces from Woodward's shop, it's a pretty strong attribution.
00:12:08
Speaker
And now you mentioned that Woodward had enslaved labor in his shop.
00:12:14
Speaker
It was a very large shop.
00:12:15
Speaker
Presumably there were numerous workers there.
00:12:18
Speaker
Do you have much of a sense of what the balance was?
00:12:21
Speaker
How many enslaved craftspeople might there have been?
00:12:25
Speaker
How many free craftspeople there might have been?
00:12:27
Speaker
Just paint a picture for me.
00:12:30
Speaker
What kind of business was this?
00:12:31
Speaker
So that is one of those things that I would love to find out.
00:12:35
Speaker
And it could be a situation where there's just more research needed there, because that could really tell us more about the dynamic of some of these early cabinet shops.
00:12:46
Speaker
It's one of those questions that's always burning at the back of my mind.
Enslaved Craftsman James' Journey to Freedom
00:12:50
Speaker
But, you know, due to limitations in the archive, we can never sort of pinpoint
00:12:55
Speaker
exact numbers and who was here when and things change and all of those sorts of things.
00:13:01
Speaker
But I will say that, you know, when Woodward begins to advertise his cabinet making business in a newspaper down in Norfolk,
00:13:12
Speaker
He talks about some of the men that he has working in his shop and he said, quote, he had workmen who could execute all orders equal to any importation.
00:13:22
Speaker
So what's happening in that shop, it's very, very skilled labor in that shop.
00:13:27
Speaker
And we'll talk about this in detail a little bit later.
00:13:29
Speaker
But Woodward often refers to James as a journeyman cabinetmaker.
00:13:34
Speaker
and not an apprentice, you know, sort of as a testament to his skill.
00:13:38
Speaker
And just, sorry, just to clarify for listeners, so an apprentice is sort of someone who's being schooled in the arts, and then a journeyman is someone who's completed that apprenticeship, you know, traditionally and is sort of on their way to potentially becoming a master, right?
00:13:54
Speaker
Yep, that's exactly right.
00:13:55
Speaker
So James, as a journeyman, is above that apprenticeship level and is required to work independently, think independently, follow instructions and design plans and all things of that nature.
00:14:08
Speaker
So let's talk a little more about James.
00:14:10
Speaker
So he was effectively, I was going to say apprentice, but not apprentice.
00:14:16
Speaker
I mean, he really was sort of a full on skilled laborer of the sort that if he weren't enslaved, you might have to pay a lot of money and wages to somebody with those skills, right?
00:14:30
Speaker
Correct.
00:14:31
Speaker
And for James, the records show that he is initially a part of this system known as the hiring out process where individuals can work for other individuals, not their primary enslaver.
00:14:48
Speaker
and are sometimes paid wages.
00:14:50
Speaker
However, you know, through the institution of enslavement and it's all of its peculiarities, at times that money went directly to the owner.
00:14:59
Speaker
But at times you did see enslaved people who were able to generate revenue.
00:15:06
Speaker
And so James was hired out to James Woodward, trying to keep the Jameses together.
00:15:12
Speaker
But James, the enslaved, was hired.
00:15:16
Speaker
excuse me, hired out by his owner, Elizabeth Bailey.
00:15:21
Speaker
And so, you know, this kind of doubles down, though, on an earlier comment to just how bustling of a shop you could have, and one could argue for the need for extra help, skilled help and skilled labor in an already moving shop.
00:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, so tell me more about this arrangement, because it's quite unusual.
00:15:43
Speaker
And it's, well, maybe not unusual, but it's maybe a little bit contrary to what people may think of or intuit about slave and owner relationships.
00:15:55
Speaker
Because this is more of a complex sort of financial situation than just the one-dimensional, you know, this person owns that person and has full control over everything they do, right?
00:16:09
Speaker
Yes, it is definitely a much more complex situation.
00:16:13
Speaker
And this is just an excellent window into how nuanced in certain cases the institution of enslavement could be, but also for craftspeople who have the skill and the proficiency to add another layer that changes the dynamic of how we look at enslavement.
00:16:35
Speaker
And so for the case of
00:16:36
Speaker
of the enslaved man James, he's being hired out undoubtedly for his skill to James Woodward, who has the shop.
00:16:46
Speaker
But James, as was mentioned, the enslaved was a journeyman cabinetmaker, meaning that he would have been through a period of time where he did apprentice, learned skills, and became highly developed.
00:16:57
Speaker
Now, where the plot thickens, so to speak, is that it appears that the enslaved man James
00:17:05
Speaker
enters into another subcontract with James Woodward, his then person who he was reporting to being hired out.
00:17:17
Speaker
So you could say, you know, potentially with air quotes, his enslaver to buy himself and then repay the debt in one year.
00:17:27
Speaker
where he would work as a journeyman cabinetmaker.
00:17:29
Speaker
So here you have an enslaved person entering into a contractual agreement and ergo obligation with their then enslaver through another contract to ultimately secure freedom.
00:17:45
Speaker
And I think it's a great example of how, one, the great lengths to which individuals went through to secure their freedom, but also
00:17:56
Speaker
just how intricate and complex, again, as you mentioned, the institution of enslavement
James Woodward and James' Freedom Transaction
00:18:00
Speaker
could be.
00:18:00
Speaker
This is fascinating.
00:18:03
Speaker
James Woodward, the cabinetmaker, loaned money to the enslaved James in order to buy his freedom from his owner, Elizabeth Bailey.
00:18:13
Speaker
James Woodward essentially pays the enslaved James to be able to free himself, emancipate himself from her.
00:18:23
Speaker
What does he get in exchange for that?
00:18:25
Speaker
He had to essentially indenture himself, but work for a year in James Woodward's shop.
00:18:35
Speaker
So James Woodward was getting a year's worth of labor for the price of emancipating the enslaved James.
00:18:44
Speaker
And it makes me wonder, I mean, why would James Woodward not simply have purchased James for himself?
00:18:51
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:18:53
Speaker
And again, it's another one of those, when you look at this agreement between all of the parties here, it's another one of those that also makes you wonder why Woodward wouldn't have done that.
00:19:06
Speaker
I mean, it could be a host of reasons, right, as to why Woodward didn't want to enter into an agreement where he owned someone and their labor as well.
00:19:16
Speaker
Tell me a little about that.
00:19:18
Speaker
I mean, what are some of the reasons you could imagine for that?
00:19:21
Speaker
that Woodward might not have wanted to own him.
00:19:25
Speaker
I think there's a lot happening here.
00:19:30
Speaker
And when we think about the nature of enslavement during this period of time, when we think about what's happening in these shops, it could have may well been that
00:19:41
Speaker
Woodward did not want to function as an enslaver.
00:19:45
Speaker
It could be that, you know, it's hard to tell.
00:19:49
Speaker
Maybe there was some type of an affinity relationship between the two men.
00:19:53
Speaker
And Woodward, you know, was on board with James becoming a free man and a free cabinetmaker.
00:20:00
Speaker
So it sort of gets into all of those, I wonder,
00:20:04
Speaker
types of questions, but I really do think that those are very good questions, right?
00:20:08
Speaker
Because it's getting us to think about the dynamics of these relationships.
00:20:12
Speaker
It gets us to really thinking about how sometimes complicated people are.
00:20:17
Speaker
And it really makes us sort of ask new questions about all of these old objects.
Collaborative Nature of Table's Creation
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, isn't that such a common property of all kinds of antiques and historic decorative arts?
00:20:29
Speaker
You know, they're always...
00:20:30
Speaker
some answerable questions and then usually a lot of unanswerable questions and you kind of have to to lean into your imagination to to fill in some of those gaps right absolutely
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll just say, you know, we talked about, as I mentioned earlier, and this notion of the fluidity of the situation between the enslaved man, James, and the shop owner, James Woodward.
00:20:55
Speaker
But when we really look at time in the 19th century, and particularly in this time,
00:21:01
Speaker
It's not uncommon for there to be a very fluid mix or interchangeable mix of individuals working in these shops.
00:21:11
Speaker
And I think that that's something that is another reason why this object is very important as we dissect it and pull it apart for its kind of cultural references that
00:21:20
Speaker
You know, it perhaps is very conceivable because we have other objects in our exhibition that do speak to this where you have a shop where the owner has enslaved free people of color and white people all working in this group together.
00:21:37
Speaker
And so when you think about that in context, then you're able to envision a system or a shop or a business where perhaps an enslaver doesn't need a particular person to be enslaved to benefit from their labor and skill, you know, while that said person who was formerly enslaved may also benefit financially.
00:22:00
Speaker
So how would an enslaved person like James have ended up in a cabinet making shop like this in the first place?
00:22:06
Speaker
I mean, as we've talked about, this is highly skilled labor.
00:22:10
Speaker
You look at this table and it's incredibly sophisticated work, at least to my naive eye.
00:22:16
Speaker
I mean, it's on par with
00:22:19
Speaker
the best furniture that you'd find coming out of places like Philadelphia or New York, or maybe it's even in some ways competitive with, I guess, as Woodward was advertising, competitive with imported furniture from Europe.
00:22:32
Speaker
I mean, these are deep, deep levels of skill.
00:22:35
Speaker
that required presumably many, many years of work and experience.
00:22:42
Speaker
So what kind of path might an enslaved person like James have followed into being able to practice a trade like that?
00:22:50
Speaker
I think it depends on a lot of things, right?
00:22:53
Speaker
I think we have to take into the context of what life was like in Norfolk at this time period.
00:22:59
Speaker
You know, it's a port city.
00:23:00
Speaker
It's bustling.
00:23:02
Speaker
It's home to so many cabinet-making shops.
00:23:06
Speaker
And scholars have found that there were over four dozen furniture-related craftsmen working in Norfolk during this time period.
00:23:14
Speaker
So it's popular there, right?
00:23:16
Speaker
Woodworking is.
00:23:17
Speaker
And I think for someone like the enslaved man, James, he could have very easily picked this trade up back at his enslaver's home.
00:23:26
Speaker
We do know that Elizabeth Bailey's husband was a cabinetmaker as well.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so he could have learned from his enslavery, he could have learned from other enslaved men who lived with him on that plantation or in an urban setting.
00:23:43
Speaker
He could have come across it in many ways.
00:23:45
Speaker
And so when we think about it that way, you know, there are also just sort of eyewitness accounts from this time period that talk about
00:23:52
Speaker
You know, enslaved boys carrying the work bags, the tool bags of white cabinet makers as they move throughout cities like Norfolk and Charleston.
00:24:02
Speaker
You hear a lot of examples of cabinet makers who are also enslavers teaching young boys the craft and young enslaved boys the craft and letting it grow with them.
00:24:13
Speaker
Because when you think about it, if you invest that type of skill, learning and knowledge into your enslaved person, that enslaved person then begins to earn you as an enslaver money.
00:24:26
Speaker
So it's in your best interest in many ways to have an enslaved craftsperson that's also involved in the trades because it's another way for you to sort of make a passive income.
Table's Journey to Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
00:24:37
Speaker
So do we have any idea whether James was actually involved with this particular table or what can we infer about that?
00:24:43
Speaker
Sure.
00:24:44
Speaker
So what we can infer about that was that he was present in that shop during this table's construction.
00:24:51
Speaker
We know his name.
00:24:51
Speaker
We know that the nature of cabinet making shops is that he was not, you know, people don't often work alone solely on one piece of furniture by themselves.
00:25:02
Speaker
And so for us, when we were thinking about what this object could tell us and how it could contribute to the show, one of the things that we wanted to communicate to our visitors is that while we know James's name and we know that he was present during this time,
00:25:17
Speaker
We also don't know who else was there with him.
00:25:20
Speaker
Right.
00:25:20
Speaker
So, again, it raises questions about what's happening in the shop.
00:25:24
Speaker
It encourages people to think about how there are many, many hands involved in all of the pieces that we see in our in our museums and decorative arts exhibitions.
00:25:33
Speaker
And again, it really gets us thinking about who's there that we know and who also is there that we don't know of.
00:25:40
Speaker
Now, the piece was loaned to the exhibition by the Museum of Early Southern Record of Arts.
00:25:46
Speaker
What do we know about where it's been since 1819 and how it made its way from that shop in Norfolk to eventually to Mazda and now into this exhibition?
00:25:58
Speaker
We know from Mesda's extensive research files that the table made by James in James Woodward's shop has been with the family until roughly the 1940s when it was sold at auction.
00:26:10
Speaker
And with it, there's documentation at the table.
00:26:13
Speaker
There is a bill from the Norfolk cabinetmaker, James Woodward, to Humberston Skipwith.
00:26:19
Speaker
for the sale of this table.
00:26:21
Speaker
So we were able to say that this piece was for certain made in Woodward's shop, that it resided for certain at Elm Hill and at Prestwood, and then when it was sold, carried that story with it to auction when eventually it lands at Mesda.
00:26:38
Speaker
So, I'd love to hear your thinking, maybe all three of you just in general, and Tiffany, you were speaking to this a minute ago, but a number of objects in the exhibition were produced in white owned workshops.
00:26:53
Speaker
And that does make it difficult or even impossible to know whether a particular enslaved worker was interacting with a particular piece.
Challenges in Recognizing Individual Contributions
00:27:02
Speaker
And I mean, I guess to flip that on its head for a bit, it can also be impossible to say whether a particular white owner was involved in the production of a particular piece.
00:27:13
Speaker
This is something we get in silver all the time with somebody like Paul Revere, who ran a sprawling large shop and who, in many cases, probably never touched
00:27:25
Speaker
many of the objects that came through with his mark stamped on them.
00:27:30
Speaker
So it's always difficult to say exactly whose hands were on which object when.
00:27:36
Speaker
But I'd just be curious to hear your thoughts about how that uncertainty influences the stories that you're trying to tell.
00:27:45
Speaker
That's an excellent point.
00:27:46
Speaker
And I think
00:27:48
Speaker
It's one that kind of underscores the value of our work because when you look at this example of James, let's if we go back for a second and just look at Norfolk from more of a demographic sense, you know, when you look at 1820, for instance, just picking a year or a time frame, so to speak, the population hovers just short, just shy of about nine thousand, about thirty three hundred of which are enslaved.
00:28:14
Speaker
So, you know, that's close to 30 percent of the population.
00:28:19
Speaker
Why that's important is because enslaved people in their presence, which we know about and are somewhat comfortable historically talking about now, it's still not fully underscored as to what that means as far as
00:28:35
Speaker
their importance and from the day to day aspects of a city or a shop running to the more integral or nuanced perspectives that these individuals are everywhere and participating in most of your municipalities or your building functions and what have you.
00:28:53
Speaker
Right.
00:28:53
Speaker
And then when we overlay this idea that in a shop, once a person is,
00:29:00
Speaker
or a shop owner attains notoriety, as you mentioned, Paul Revere perhaps being one of the more notable silversmiths, everything becomes ascribed to them.
00:29:12
Speaker
However, in many cases, they are not by the sweat of their hand creating.
00:29:19
Speaker
And so with that kind of monumental understanding as well, we're able to see that day to day, you have a number of people in shops making things.
00:29:29
Speaker
Now, the last thing I'll say to that is that in many cases, we also in cabinet shops see that it is ordered by design.
00:29:36
Speaker
And what I mean by that is you have several people participating in the building or the composition of a piece of furniture, right?
00:29:48
Speaker
So you may have a joiner and you have other individuals who are
00:29:52
Speaker
utilizing their skill to accomplish one task in the building of the table.
00:29:59
Speaker
So when you look at it from that vignette, it's very easy to see how someone like James, who is listed, right, and is titled as being someone of a journeyman level, so not an apprentice, somebody who knows the craft, knows what they're doing well,
00:30:14
Speaker
And then you have James Woodward, the shop owner, bragging and boasting about what they can do and the pieces that they can make.
00:30:22
Speaker
You know, we're able to make those reasonable historical deductions and say that you see people like James are participatory in these actions.
Group Efforts in Historical Furniture Creation
00:30:31
Speaker
And then I'd also like to add to that, you know, when we look at Woodward's own words, when he's advertising, he's saying, hey, there are men in this workshop.
00:30:40
Speaker
So he's fully stating that, you know, this is a group project, right?
00:30:43
Speaker
A group effort.
00:30:45
Speaker
And so I think that when we think about it that way, you can really begin to see just how much of a group effort creating furniture such as this table really was.
00:30:57
Speaker
Is it coincidence that the three of you are all, I think it's fair to say, on the younger end of the spectrum as far as arts curators?
00:31:05
Speaker
I mean, is this exhibition sort of in some way reflective of a new wave of thinking?
00:31:11
Speaker
Sure.
00:31:12
Speaker
I think it's fair to label it that way.
00:31:16
Speaker
And I think that, you know, it's, you know, we're all, you know, from the same generation, roughly near the same ages.
00:31:24
Speaker
But I also think it has a lot to do with just our training and the folks who trained us and our college professors and all of those sorts of things that sort of instilled in us this way of imagining more.
00:31:38
Speaker
Right.
00:31:39
Speaker
And when I say that, what I really mean is it's particularly with this exhibition, when we're talking about concepts like freedom and liberation, one of the things that we constantly had to do right was to to think about how freedom and liberation mean different things to different people.
00:31:56
Speaker
Right.
00:31:57
Speaker
And in sort of conceptualizing those things where we're constantly imagining more.
00:32:02
Speaker
And I think it's fair to say that that's how we also approach our museum and curatorial work, right?
00:32:10
Speaker
is thinking in that way and fully embracing, right, what that means to sort of go beyond sort of the standard game plan for how you do this work, but how can we do this work on a higher level that seeks to humanize everyone that's involved in this process, that seeks to bring recognition to everyone involved in this process, and to really seeks to be inclusive
00:32:37
Speaker
in the work that we do and in how we present that work to visitors.
00:32:42
Speaker
And I'll add to that, you talk about the trends and the shift in the field.
00:32:47
Speaker
You know, I don't take lightly that, yeah, the three of us, you know, maybe on the younger-ish side of the
00:32:54
Speaker
things.
00:32:55
Speaker
But it also speaks to the gradual yet present, you know, transition of the field to be able to recognize and actually document that there is participation, right?
00:33:11
Speaker
So in our show, there are a few objects that like the breakfast table,
00:33:17
Speaker
Or narrowly, or if we look through an historical lens, may not have 20, 30, 40 years ago given any attribution to any of the other individuals who were known through documentation, known to be working in that shop, or known to be enslaved and or apprenticed to shop owners.
00:33:40
Speaker
Whereas now you're seeing institutions
00:33:43
Speaker
who are changing that narrative, even if it is just in their captioning by saying, you know, from the shop of, you know, just that one sentence changes the whole scope and the tenor of that kind of conversation by bringing more value to
00:34:05
Speaker
and more legitimacy to the other people who have kind of been left out of the documentary record for any number of reasons, many of which we know.
Art, Social History, and Beauty Contextualized
00:34:14
Speaker
And so I think it's important work in that, like,
00:34:17
Speaker
Now, Tiffany, you wrote a really interesting essay in this catalog about the history of exhibitions of Black art and Black craft.
00:34:26
Speaker
And in that essay, you write about this exhibition from 1976, which was called Two Centuries of Black American Art.
00:34:35
Speaker
I think it was in Los Angeles.
00:34:37
Speaker
And
00:34:38
Speaker
You quote this art critic of the time, Hilton Kramer, who wrote, and I'm just going to quote from your essay here, quoting Hilton Kramer.
00:34:48
Speaker
This is a difficult show to review, and this difficulty ought to be acknowledged at the outset, at least for a critic whose primary interest lies in assessing artistic merit,
00:34:57
Speaker
and who remains unpersuaded that he is performing a useful service if he allows extra artistic standards to obscure the difference between superior artistic achievement and its absence, this exhibition presents problems that ought to be more openly discussed than they usually are nowadays.
00:35:17
Speaker
And he says that the show was more interesting as a social history than for its aesthetics.
00:35:23
Speaker
and that there is simply too much here that does not belong in a serious museum exhibition, that it was a social documentary about the Black American artist rather than an anthology of achievements.
00:35:37
Speaker
And you write that Kramer's critique was without a doubt misguided, but the damage was done.
00:35:44
Speaker
I'm curious because I think some people, perhaps including some listeners, are skeptical of the intersection of art with social history and with ideology, even if that ideology is social justice.
00:36:00
Speaker
I wonder what you would say to them, Tiffany.
00:36:04
Speaker
Honestly, what I would say is you can't separate the two.
00:36:08
Speaker
You can't separate the artist from what the artist is experiencing and what they're living through or living under, right?
00:36:16
Speaker
Because so many times we hear when we go to these lectures and we read exhibition catalogs,
00:36:21
Speaker
Something that often gets said a lot is, oh, you know, the artist was painting what was around them or painting what they were saying.
00:36:29
Speaker
So in that regard, they're painting what they're seeing and what they're experiencing.
00:36:33
Speaker
Right.
00:36:34
Speaker
So I don't know why it would be any different.
00:36:37
Speaker
for a black artisan who is also painting what they're seeing and experiencing and putting that into their art.
00:36:45
Speaker
And I think if you attempt to sort of to pull slavery out of it and say that, well, you know, we can't talk about that, you're not only doing the artisan, the craftsperson a disservice, but you're also doing yourself a disservice, right?
00:37:01
Speaker
Because we need to be able to understand and acknowledge
00:37:05
Speaker
what people went through in the midst of creating the objects that they created, right?
00:37:11
Speaker
And we know that, you know, for everyone, it wasn't easy.
00:37:15
Speaker
We need to be comfortable with saying that, hey, this was a craftsperson who lived under this type of oppression, who was subjected to all of these different things.
00:37:25
Speaker
It still was able to create something so beautiful that we're all still staring at it today and talking about it as it sits on a museum platform.
00:37:34
Speaker
And to me, that's very important because it shows on the artisan's behalf, it shows tenacity.
00:37:42
Speaker
It also shows resistance, right?
00:37:45
Speaker
And so I think it's important.
00:37:46
Speaker
It's very important that we acknowledge all of that.
00:37:50
Speaker
So no, and in short, you can't separate the two for me.
00:37:54
Speaker
You can't.
00:37:55
Speaker
So, I mean, I'm a story driven guy, like as an antiques dealer and as a collector, like what's interesting to me is always, I mean, yes, the beauty of the object and the craftsmanship behind it, those are critical, but also the story around it, the context, the,
00:38:11
Speaker
the ways that it does prime your imagination and invite you to do further research and to try to understand what was happening around this piece as it was made and then as it traveled through time and space.
00:38:25
Speaker
And yet I think if I try to understand the point that Kramer, this critic, was trying to make,
00:38:30
Speaker
He was saying, well, there is a certain standard of objective beauty, and what I'm seeing in this exhibition is less attention on that standard of objective beauty and more attention on historical considerations and social and anthropological documentation and so on.
00:38:51
Speaker
And he sees the art gallery as a place that shouldn't be concerned with those things, or the museum as a place that shouldn't be concerned with those things and should instead just be concerned with this abstract ethereal notion of beauty.
00:39:04
Speaker
But are you saying that even that notion of beauty can't be separated from the context of the artist and their life and their experience?
00:39:14
Speaker
Oh, no, I wouldn't separate that at all.
00:39:17
Speaker
Because to me that that beauty and what the artisan experienced is part of the story.
00:39:21
Speaker
It's part of how we understand why they were why they were creating art and what they were creating.
00:39:28
Speaker
Right.
00:39:29
Speaker
And I think, again, if people would like to just go into a gallery and sort of stay at this one level and just, you know, see things for their beauty.
00:39:37
Speaker
Well, OK.
00:39:38
Speaker
But for someone like me, that's not enough.
00:39:42
Speaker
I want to fully immerse myself into the person that created the object, what their life and experiences were like, so I can understand why they made what they made and how they also made it.
00:39:53
Speaker
And a lot of times, what I perceive is, let's just be real.
00:40:00
Speaker
When you have situations like that and you have critiques like that, sometimes it is also tone-depth to the realities of life, right?
00:40:11
Speaker
And when you change the subject or change the field matter, it's very interesting.
00:40:16
Speaker
In fact, even curious to me how the conversation also shifts, right?
00:40:21
Speaker
So not to go down a rabbit hole, but I'll give you an example.
00:40:25
Speaker
Mary Chestnut is famed.
00:40:28
Speaker
Her Civil War diary is famed as one of the best accounts of what is going on during the war.
00:40:34
Speaker
And it is used over and again as supplemental evidence.
00:40:39
Speaker
Now, this doesn't discount Mary Chestnut's view.
00:40:42
Speaker
It doesn't discount what she observed.
00:40:44
Speaker
It's relevancy because she was there.
00:40:46
Speaker
But I don't feel like that same credit is given when you have individuals identifying and self-identifying the beauty and the work and their story, but also when you have people who
00:41:01
Speaker
who have commissioned, who owned in certain cases, or who profited from them also exerting that same force.
00:41:09
Speaker
And so the reality is James Woodward, who was the shop owner, who was the enslaver, right?
00:41:16
Speaker
Who is profiting from this entire system had no issue talking about the revel and the majestic work that's being produced in the shop, knowing full well who is all contributing to it.
00:41:30
Speaker
I think it is a miscarriage of history when you do not present all of the evidence.
00:41:37
Speaker
And the evidence in many cases is also the situations in which many of these people are producing these feats of work.
00:41:46
Speaker
And so if we look at James again, he is enslaved.
00:41:49
Speaker
He goes into a contract, has the ability to buy his freedom so he can actually see light at the end of a tunnel for which so many would never.
00:41:59
Speaker
And if I'm to really follow and dig into the critique that was made as an example,
00:42:07
Speaker
we would be just providing too much historical evidence.
00:42:11
Speaker
I don't think there's such a thing as too much historical evidence.
00:42:15
Speaker
In turn, I think it's more so of providing a backdrop to just how important and marvelous these works and these feats are.
00:42:23
Speaker
And to add on to what Torin was saying, I often think about in some of those critiques like the one you mentioned, when people are saying, well, you know, maybe this isn't beautiful or he mentioned something about artistic standards here.
00:42:38
Speaker
Right.
00:42:39
Speaker
And so something that I'm often questioning when people raise make statements like that one is, well, who taught you what was beautiful and what types of biases might they have had?
00:42:50
Speaker
Right.
00:42:50
Speaker
And so I think you have to keep I mean, you could keep interrogating that that that statement, that critique, I mean, for days.
00:42:58
Speaker
Right.
00:42:59
Speaker
But for me, that's one of the things that often comes back to who told you what was beautiful and what types of biases might they have had.
00:43:07
Speaker
Well, I love that despite trying to derail this with a philosophical rabbit hole, you guys managed to bring it back around to the breakfast table and make it concrete again.
00:43:23
Speaker
And I really appreciate you talking me through that.
00:43:25
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:43:27
Speaker
fascinating catalog.
Exhibition Schedule and Episode Credits
00:43:29
Speaker
I can't wait to see the exhibition.
00:43:31
Speaker
And I'm sure listeners, while some of them may have seen it by now already, others, I hope, will make a trip to see it either where it is now or as it travels around.
00:43:41
Speaker
And I also highly recommend that they pick up a copy of the catalog.
00:43:46
Speaker
Where is the best place for listeners to go to see where the exhibition is going to be, to see where they can buy a catalog?
00:43:53
Speaker
What should they know?
00:43:54
Speaker
Visitors, people can find out more about the exhibition by going to the DAR's website, which is dar.org slash museum.
00:44:03
Speaker
And there they can find out more about the exhibition here at the DAR Museum.
00:44:07
Speaker
They can also purchase a copy of the catalog through our shop.
00:44:11
Speaker
here at the DAR Museum.
00:44:12
Speaker
And then they'll also be able to see the full travel schedule for the exhibition as it leaves here early next year.
00:44:23
Speaker
So the exhibition will be open at the DAR Museum through 2025.
00:44:27
Speaker
And then starting in 2026, it will travel to four other locations until the end of 2028.
00:44:34
Speaker
And that full schedule will be online.
00:44:36
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:44:38
Speaker
Well, Tiffany Momin, William Strolo, and Torin Gatson, thank you so much for coming on Curious Objects, and congratulations.
00:44:46
Speaker
Today's episode was edited by Julian Minerva with web support from Sarah Palotta.
00:44:51
Speaker
Christine Hildebrand is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:44:54
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.