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Collecting Outside the Lines
24 Plays2 years ago
A conversation about broadening the scope of collecting practices beyond traditional Anglo-European material, discussing the challenges and opportunities for collectors taking an interest in previously overlooked or under-recognized fields. Led by Ben Miller, featuring Jeremy Simien, collector; and Jesse Erickson, Curator of Printed Books and Bindings, the Morgan Library and Museum. Venue: New York's Winter Show, 2023 edition.
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Transcript
Introduction and Underrepresentation Issues
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:21
Speaker
There's a huge question looming over collectors and museums right now.
00:00:25
Speaker
What do you do about the historical underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups?
00:00:31
Speaker
In recent years, we've seen a huge proliferation of interest and investment, but some of the fundamental moral and historical and economic questions are still vexing.
00:00:41
Speaker
It's one thing to say you want to do more to support these long-ignored fields of study and collecting, but it's another to grapple with the actual trade-offs, the costs, and the often unpleasant realities that brought us here in the first place.
Addressing Underrepresentation at the Winter Show
00:00:56
Speaker
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to organize a talk for the Winter Show at the Park Avenue Armory, and I thought this would be a good moment to take the bull by the horns, and if not definitively resolve those questions, at least ask them in a serious way.
00:01:11
Speaker
And I was thrilled to be joined for this by a collector and a curator who have two of the most insightful and innovative voices on these topics.
00:01:20
Speaker
That's Jeremy Simeon and Jesse Erickson.
00:01:23
Speaker
And we recorded the conversation, and I'm really glad to be able to share it with you now.
Engagement with Listeners
00:01:29
Speaker
I hope you find it as thought-provoking as I did.
00:01:32
Speaker
As always, you can reach me on Instagram at Objective Interest or via email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
00:01:40
Speaker
If you'd like to support Curious Objects but you don't have much time, you can just open the app you're using right now to listen to this and leave a rating or even write out a quick review.
00:01:51
Speaker
It's...
00:01:52
Speaker
a small thing, but it really helps convince the algorithms to show these episodes to more listeners.
00:01:56
Speaker
And I'm really grateful to those of you who have taken a moment to do it.
Broadening Focus of the Winter Show
00:02:02
Speaker
I want to start by just quickly situating ourselves.
00:02:06
Speaker
We're here at the Winter Show, which, of course, you know, 20 years ago, you would have seen pretty much 18th century furniture and paintings and sculpture here.
00:02:17
Speaker
Now the scope of the material on the view of the fair is dramatically broader.
00:02:23
Speaker
But, you know, at the same time, this is still the marquee American
00:02:27
Speaker
fair, marquee American exhibition of traditional material that we all still treasure and love.
00:02:34
Speaker
But, you know, it's clear that things are different now.
00:02:38
Speaker
Collectors are paying attention to works that come from places and that were made by people that were previously easy to ignore by default.
00:02:48
Speaker
Scholars are turning over stones that have been right under our feet for a long time, but we're finally starting to see the undersides of them.
00:02:56
Speaker
And even the contemporary art world is making great strides toward greater inclusivity.
Introducing the Guests: Jeremy Simeon and Jesse Erickson
00:03:03
Speaker
And that is all very exciting and encouraging.
00:03:08
Speaker
But it also is raising a host of questions and challenges about how to approach these new categories of material and how to reconsider the traditional material that we still cherish.
00:03:23
Speaker
So we're talking today about collecting outside the lines, the lines of traditional Anglo-European material.
00:03:32
Speaker
I'm just thrilled to be joined by these two gentlemen who, they've both been pushing these lines through their world-class research, their connoisseurship, but also their deep thinking about culture and history.
Jeremy Simeon on 19th-Century Portraiture
00:03:51
Speaker
I want to start just by helping the audience to get together the two of you a little bit better and hear a little bit back about your interests, your research, your projects.
00:04:03
Speaker
Maybe you could, in just a moment, give a brief introduction to your area of focus and maybe tease us with something that you're working on at the moment.
00:04:14
Speaker
Jeremy, do you want to?
00:04:15
Speaker
Sure.
00:04:16
Speaker
So my name is Jeremy Simeon.
00:04:18
Speaker
I'm from Louisiana.
00:04:21
Speaker
And my area of focus would really be 19th century portraiture.
00:04:25
Speaker
But every now and then I also get into 18th century portraiture.
00:04:29
Speaker
And more specialized still, depictions of people of African descent, which is quite rare portraiture.
00:04:38
Speaker
You may have looked around the show and you're not going to see many examples of that.
00:04:42
Speaker
It's a needle in a haystack.
00:04:45
Speaker
Been through a lot of haystacks.
00:04:49
Speaker
But luckily, I've had quite a bit of success in finding this African presence in portraiture.
Jesse Erickson on Ethnobibliography
00:04:57
Speaker
And because I am New Orleans-centric and Louisiana-centric, my focus has been on Louisiana.
00:05:05
Speaker
but also the greater what I call Creole or Caribbean world.
00:05:10
Speaker
So these colonies where we see the African presence there.
00:05:14
Speaker
And I've had some great success at finding some phenomenal paintings, some hidden stories, and occasionally some hidden sitters that were, well, buried beneath additional pigment.
00:05:27
Speaker
And currently right now I'm working on an 18th century French colonial painting
00:05:33
Speaker
of two sitters.
00:05:35
Speaker
One is an aristocrat.
00:05:37
Speaker
The other is a lady of color.
00:05:38
Speaker
We do not know her status and we don't know her position, but we know she's looking right at the viewer and says, you need to know my position and my status.
00:05:49
Speaker
And so I'm fighting very hard to try to demystify that and I'm hoping we can get that done.
00:05:56
Speaker
So.
00:05:57
Speaker
Now about you, Jesse.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm Jesse Erickson at the Morgan Library Museum where I'm the ASTIC curator and department head of Printed Books and Bindings.
00:06:08
Speaker
My research is centered in a sort of nascent methodology called ethnobibliography.
00:06:14
Speaker
And ethnobibliography, as I have developed it, it was originally conceived by another bibliographer, a cataloger named Hugh Amory, back in the 90s.
00:06:25
Speaker
But my sort of development of this methodology has advanced it in a way where I'm looking at the intersection of the social construction of racial and ethnic identity and the book as a material object.
00:06:39
Speaker
So I'm really interested in the ways that typography and layout and binding and illustration and all of the various components of the book as a material text speak to the ways in which we construct racial identity.
00:06:52
Speaker
I started sort of expanding and exploring this methodology, well actually prior to my dissertation work, but my dissertation work was focused on analyzing black literacy practices in special collections libraries using ethnobigliography as that methodology, as a lens by which we can understand the nuances of the ways that black Americans interact with the book.
Is Interest in Underrepresented Art a Fad?
00:07:15
Speaker
Since then, I've developed a deep passion for Victorian popular fiction through my own personal engagement with a Victorian period author named Weta.
00:07:24
Speaker
So I've now directed that same methodology to the analysis of her literary corpus
00:07:32
Speaker
and looking at various substantiations of additions coming out of different regions and different languages and at the ways that that speaks to particular ethnic construction and ethnic identities within the communities of readership that's situated in those areas.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, thanks.
00:07:55
Speaker
And, you know, I just... I think I want to start off by asking
00:08:00
Speaker
What the hell is happening?
00:08:03
Speaker
Because over the last three years we've seen this absolute explosion of interest in underrepresented artists, underrepresented areas of art and decorative arts, particularly since 2020 and George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
00:08:20
Speaker
And, you know, I've seen retail prices for works by black makers.
00:08:26
Speaker
Increased by a factor of 10 or 20 or 50 or more.
00:08:28
Speaker
I mean, is this just...
00:08:33
Speaker
society finally recognizing the true value of these pieces?
00:08:39
Speaker
Or to what extent is this a new fashion or a fad that's inevitably going to pass?
Recognition or Apology for Black Art?
00:08:46
Speaker
I mean, is this more like a trend line that is just going to keep rising?
00:08:51
Speaker
And whose money is really driving that trend?
00:08:59
Speaker
Oh, I have to begin on this one?
00:09:01
Speaker
I mean, that's a lot going on there.
00:09:03
Speaker
It's a complicated issue.
00:09:05
Speaker
Or is it an issue at all?
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, I mean, I guess that's a matter of perspective, right?
00:09:10
Speaker
So some people would look at this and say, well, this is obviously a solution.
00:09:14
Speaker
This is an acknowledgement of a marginalized people finally having their day.
00:09:21
Speaker
But is it just a day?
00:09:22
Speaker
Or is it a week or a month?
00:09:25
Speaker
And I think some people could get very nervous thinking about that.
00:09:30
Speaker
But for someone like myself who's been collecting this for 10 years, not that long, but long enough to leave a mark, I don't concern myself with questions like that.
00:09:42
Speaker
because it's one to be a hipster.
00:09:46
Speaker
I liked it before it was cool.
00:09:48
Speaker
And I don't worry about if tomorrow they no longer recognize the importance of the African presence or this material culture.
00:09:59
Speaker
Sure, it's concerning on some level, but I don't worry about it.
00:10:02
Speaker
Where's the money coming from?
00:10:04
Speaker
Well, it seems like it's coming from the heavens because it's pouring down.
00:10:07
Speaker
Oh my God, like the rain earlier today.
00:10:09
Speaker
It's coming from everywhere.
00:10:11
Speaker
I think it's an apology, a recognition.
00:10:15
Speaker
I think we had this pressure cooker of social injustice broadcast in 4K, sometimes 6K.
00:10:25
Speaker
when we see these things happening with George Floyd and other black people and struggle.
00:10:33
Speaker
We'll leave that struggle.
00:10:35
Speaker
And so maybe it's an apology.
00:10:37
Speaker
Maybe it's a spotlight.
00:10:39
Speaker
I can tell you it's warm and it's refreshing because it's so cold for the years leading up to this moment.
00:10:47
Speaker
And I'm optimistic it'll continue, but I don't really want to speculate too much on where the money's coming from because again, as a person who's passionate about this, I can't get into those
Academic Influence on Collecting Practices
00:11:00
Speaker
sort of things.
00:11:00
Speaker
It'll affect my ability to persevere and continue on and tell these stories.
00:11:07
Speaker
I love this question because it is a can of worms.
00:11:14
Speaker
I would love to think of it as an arc, but perhaps it's more of a pendulum.
00:11:23
Speaker
Black folks have been collecting our own history for generations.
00:11:27
Speaker
You just gotta go to Schaumburg, my neighborhood, to see how we can attest to that.
00:11:37
Speaker
But this resonates with me on a personal level because
00:11:41
Speaker
Number one, it is part of my own raison d'etre for how I approach the field at large, right?
00:11:50
Speaker
And the question that I'm always trying to address, the question that keeps me up at night and that I get up for in the morning is, how do we make this field more inclusive?
00:11:59
Speaker
How do we make this field more diverse long term, right?
00:12:03
Speaker
And a lot, you know, this was my question
00:12:07
Speaker
going into it more than 15 years ago.
00:12:11
Speaker
And more than 15 years ago, this wasn't a question for the field at leverage, right?
00:12:16
Speaker
So I've seen, I've watched this blossom.
00:12:19
Speaker
These conversations sort of come to the fore, especially since 2020, although the pendulum's swung back a little bit since then.
00:12:30
Speaker
Kind of giving me whiplash a little bit.
00:12:33
Speaker
But, you know,
00:12:37
Speaker
Closer to a decade ago, people started recognizing, oh, we need to do better with hiring people of color into libraries, galleries, museums, into the art world, into memory fields.
00:12:50
Speaker
But that's not really a panacea, right?
00:12:55
Speaker
And so this moment, I think it's a combination of, it's definitely multifactorial in that
00:13:01
Speaker
On the one hand, you have academia recognizing, okay, there's a clear need here because the curriculum's changing.
00:13:08
Speaker
Curriculum's changing, right?
00:13:10
Speaker
And so how do special collections, libraries, collectors of culture represent those changing trends within the communities of scholarship?
Complexities of Diversifying Collections
00:13:21
Speaker
That's when I sort of started to really observe a shift happening.
00:13:28
Speaker
So that's the next level.
00:13:30
Speaker
Right, so there's the demand and that great demand sort of creates a financial incentive, right?
00:13:38
Speaker
Because a lot of vendors have institutional clientele.
00:13:44
Speaker
So there's that aspect.
00:13:46
Speaker
But on the other side,
00:13:49
Speaker
it becomes sort of a double-edged sword in my opinion because, at least in my experience, you start to get into the more complicated aspects when you look at it in a holistic lens.
00:14:02
Speaker
You have a community of donors, right?
00:14:05
Speaker
You have your trustees, your board members, right?
00:14:10
Speaker
These are the individuals and folks that set up endowed funds for collection development, right?
00:14:15
Speaker
So if there's resistance there, there's a roadblock.
00:14:19
Speaker
And then you have the vendors themselves.
00:14:21
Speaker
And this is where it gets really problematic.
00:14:25
Speaker
Because when you're profiting off of black history, right, and it's so bizarre because, I mean, it's nice to say, it's surreal for me as a black person who grew up, sort of hip hop generation, I have looked at rare book catalogs that have materials
00:14:46
Speaker
that I would look at and say, oh, you know, that's just so-and-so from down the block, you know, a yearbook or a photo album or pictures of people that I would very much identify and I don't understand how now that is now worth, you know, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000.
00:15:00
Speaker
But then I see it in my own family.
00:15:08
Speaker
I've experienced this in that my wife, her late great grandmother was a woman named Jessie Mae Robinson.
00:15:18
Speaker
We believe she was the first black woman in ASCAP, very successful songwriter.
00:15:22
Speaker
She wrote a song, Let's Have a Party, recorded by Elvis, Paul McCartney, very successful songwriter.
00:15:31
Speaker
And as a black woman, you know, in the mid 20th century, producing songs, owning your own catalog like that was very, a big deal, you know?
00:15:39
Speaker
So, you know, we're at the point where we're trying to land these papers at an institution.
00:15:45
Speaker
And I've been on the other side of that as a professional, you know, bringing collections in, trying to do it in the most ethical way possible.
00:15:54
Speaker
But then now on the flip side, trying to do this as a person, a family member, you realize how many obstacles are in place.
00:16:05
Speaker
How do I get an appraiser?
00:16:07
Speaker
We can't afford to fly somebody down.
00:16:10
Speaker
It's very expensive.
00:16:13
Speaker
And then there's individuals that are interested in breaking up the collection so that it can be sold on the market.
00:16:19
Speaker
And there's a financial incentive in that, but you know that
00:16:23
Speaker
I know that it's gonna sell for a lot more than what people are gonna put on the table.
00:16:28
Speaker
So I imagine there's a lot of that kind of thing going on where you have really savvy dealers who are identifying sources of collections and are able to make a good profit off of these trends.
00:16:43
Speaker
So on the one hand it's a good thing because,
00:16:47
Speaker
These are stories that are now being told and how are you gonna tell these stories because people that are in positions of power to be able to preserve these histories, collect these histories, document them and make them accessible, now that we have an increasing amount of people of color in these fields, although we're just now making inroads after all these years.
00:17:05
Speaker
You know, it's good that that shift is happening.
00:17:08
Speaker
But on the other hand, there's still exploitation on every
Cultural Insight and Diverse Perspectives
00:17:12
Speaker
level.
00:17:12
Speaker
So the question then becomes, how do we diversify our donor base?
00:17:15
Speaker
How do we diversify our vendors?
00:17:17
Speaker
How do we diversify every single sector in this network of different sort of industries that create the environment within which these histories can be preserved?
00:17:35
Speaker
And Jeremy, on the collecting side of things, I mean, you've been acquiring materials through, at this point, what must feel like a real roller coaster of market interest.
00:17:48
Speaker
So, I mean, what effect does that have on your own collecting practice?
00:17:52
Speaker
as you watch the same material.
00:17:55
Speaker
Again, as you say, as a hipster, maybe 10 years ago when you were starting out, it was much easier to acquire.
00:18:02
Speaker
What effect does that have on you?
00:18:03
Speaker
Well, I haven't really had a problem acquiring pieces because I think I look in unconventional places and perhaps I have a bit of insight as a person of color.
00:18:12
Speaker
But what I have noticed, and this is unpopular, is a double standard in the industry as a person of color dealing with household name, auction houses,
00:18:23
Speaker
major dealers, and even certain other avenues.
00:18:27
Speaker
So it's worth more when it's somebody that they're accustomed to dealing with, somebody who wants to break up a collection, as opposed to a person of color who has an intimate connection with this, whether it's something that descended in the family, or it's something that descended in another family that you're sure could have been your situation, or was, echoes your situation.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I think what's important now
00:18:53
Speaker
Sorry, they jumped the gun.
00:18:55
Speaker
Is that we have to have transparency and we have to push these institutions to say, wait a minute.
00:19:03
Speaker
We have to appreciate this, not appropriate it.
00:19:06
Speaker
And we have to share this and not sell it.
00:19:09
Speaker
Because that's what's happening.
00:19:12
Speaker
They're selling it and they're making it very...
00:19:16
Speaker
interesting narratives, you know, sellable, but those are not necessarily the truth or the true narratives.
00:19:24
Speaker
And what's the point of any of this if we're just going to get this and fashion it in a manner that the powers that be, the same old powers that be, see fit.
Evolving Research Methodologies
00:19:36
Speaker
Y'all could have just let me stay home and relax with coffee and eBay.
00:19:43
Speaker
I didn't need to be here.
00:19:44
Speaker
You don't want to hear from me.
00:19:46
Speaker
You just want what I have.
00:19:49
Speaker
Well, because there are, as Jesse is talking about, there are multiple sides maybe to this coin.
00:19:55
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:19:57
Speaker
One aspect here is that as interest grows, and of course interest in money go hand in hand, in many if not almost all cases, as interest grows, that also means that there are, in many institutions, there is preponderance of funding for research, for study,
00:20:15
Speaker
Of course for acquisitions for public institutions, which we'll talk about in a minute, but you know, how do you understand that side of things where perhaps the material is now able to be investigated in a way that they're just one of the resources?
00:20:30
Speaker
Well, so did we have to look at that?
00:20:32
Speaker
And I think it's important to look at that.
00:20:34
Speaker
And again, this is an unpopular opinion, but we have to look at who's investigating.
00:20:40
Speaker
And what are their instructions when investigating?
00:20:43
Speaker
Be safe with this.
00:20:44
Speaker
Don't be too radical.
00:20:46
Speaker
Now, whether they say that or not, that's what's happening.
00:20:49
Speaker
And who is doing this investigation?
00:20:51
Speaker
Who's looking into this?
00:20:52
Speaker
And do they have cultural insight to do that?
00:20:56
Speaker
And that may sound elitist at first, but it's not.
00:20:59
Speaker
There's cultural memory.
00:21:00
Speaker
There's things my grandmother told me that your grandmother may or may not have told you.
00:21:04
Speaker
And there's things my grandmother told me without ever telling me.
00:21:09
Speaker
And I think for certain pieces of material culture, especially when we're talking about the African presence in Louisiana, I think I'm a better, and not just me, there's others, there's many allies, I think I would be probably more fit to do a little digging than perhaps somebody who's not acquainted with that culture, whether being of it or just not in it.
00:21:36
Speaker
said I'm limited strictly to people of African descent, but you should have some insight.
00:21:42
Speaker
What's your take on that, Jesse?
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree.
00:21:46
Speaker
And I'm actually, I'm encouraged by what I'm
Impact of Diverse Histories in Collections
00:21:50
Speaker
seeing on the ground.
00:21:50
Speaker
I'm sort of excited on a certain level on what's been percolating and bubbling up.
00:21:56
Speaker
And that is,
00:21:58
Speaker
the sort of final frontier in my opinion, that is opening up and diversifying the modalities by which knowledge is produced itself.
00:22:10
Speaker
You know, the traditional model for research in archives and special collections working with cultural objects is a very sort of
00:22:23
Speaker
settler colonialist enlightenment model where you have the lone genius sort of studying objects in a cabinet of curiosities kind of way to make discoveries right and then producing an essay or a monograph upon that very sort of
00:22:43
Speaker
individualized, almost a private form of research, right?
00:22:48
Speaker
It's very solitary.
00:22:49
Speaker
And this is fostered within the environment itself, which is often very sober and quiet, right?
00:23:03
Speaker
And so the means by which knowledge is produced through the engagement with these objects
00:23:13
Speaker
within academia, within research libraries, and in some respects even in public history through walking through an exhibition and interpreting a narrative, right, it privileges
00:23:31
Speaker
particular modality that is rooted in a Eurocentric perspective.
00:23:37
Speaker
But what I'm seeing now is even in the more empirical, or as I say, the STEM fields, the sciences, there's an openness to expanding that, at least opening themselves to the idea that there are various
00:23:55
Speaker
modalities by which knowledge is produced.
00:23:57
Speaker
And this is radical.
00:23:58
Speaker
I mean, I've already seen pushback in online forums and things like that about like, oh no, you know, the sky's gonna fall because science is science and you have to teach it.
00:24:07
Speaker
It's in accordance with the scientific method and that's that.
00:24:14
Speaker
the scrutiny that post-moderns apply to the sciences, right?
00:24:21
Speaker
Or historians of science who have unearthed scientific racism and all that kind of versions of scientific research that have happened.
00:24:34
Speaker
But at least to me, it seems to me that that's the final frontier, right?
00:24:42
Speaker
And this gets back to what you're saying,
00:24:44
Speaker
in that really when you're opening up access, it's one thing to start letting people of color or people from other cultures come in and look at, many times, their own cultural history, their own objects that have been sealed away almost hermetically and reserved for a certain segment of society that has traditionally been privileged with access to these materials.
00:25:12
Speaker
So, you know, when you have
00:25:16
Speaker
bringing more diversity to their collections.
00:25:19
Speaker
And you have sort of a critical mass of all these diverse histories now living in museums, galleries, and special collections.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yes, I mean it makes sense to me that now you're gonna have to open that up, not just to researchers of color, but the ways that they do research that may be different, may be uncomfortable.
Advice for Collectors on Diverse Materials
00:25:43
Speaker
And so that requires rethinking the whole model itself and start rethinking how reading rooms operate.
00:25:50
Speaker
Not to say you have to throw the baby out of backwater and get rid of the old model, but just be open to exploring different ways
00:25:58
Speaker
that we can present these materials or have people engage with these materials that may be sort of counterintuitive to some of the concerns around preservation or conservation or some of the concerns around maintaining a so required environment.
00:26:13
Speaker
Maybe it's more conversational.
00:26:15
Speaker
Maybe it's more dialogic in nature and involves investigating particular materials as a group, you know.
00:26:24
Speaker
Or maybe it's engaging through producing other forms of art.
00:26:30
Speaker
So instead of a monograph or an essay or a scholarly presentation.
00:26:35
Speaker
So that's where I'm really excited about.
00:26:41
Speaker
You know, it's, we have a long inherited set of assumptions about the proper context to view the material and to think about the material.
00:26:52
Speaker
And maybe one of the side effects of the last three years is going to be, you know, to challenge some of those assumptions.
00:27:00
Speaker
that frankly have impact beyond just the racial history and the cultural history, but that speak more broadly to our experience of museums, but also just of decorative arts and art in general.
00:27:16
Speaker
So there might be some exciting changes to think about there.
00:27:20
Speaker
But I want to pose a hypothetical and sort of come at this from the opposite side for a moment, because
00:27:26
Speaker
So let's imagine, let's say I'm a collector.
00:27:30
Speaker
Maybe I'm even somebody who's on the board of a museum or two.
00:27:37
Speaker
And I have, for decades, I've been collecting traditional collectible material.
00:27:45
Speaker
That's the world that I've been immersed in.
00:27:47
Speaker
But now I'm slowly starting to think that
00:27:51
Speaker
there might be this whole other world that I haven't thought much about, that I haven't paid much attention to, that I've never really been educated about.
00:28:00
Speaker
And, you know, I'm seeing museum exhibitions that feature black craftspeople,
00:28:05
Speaker
I'm reading articles about black artists.
00:28:08
Speaker
I'm thinking more explicitly about the legacy of slavery and colonialism vis-a-vis the historic works that I've traditionally acquired.
00:28:19
Speaker
But I'm not sure how my own collecting should reflect this new paradigm.
00:28:25
Speaker
So what advice do you have for somebody in that position?
00:28:32
Speaker
Well, I think anyone who's interested in this, I would welcome you as an ally.
00:28:36
Speaker
And I think that is a wonderful thing because there's enough material culture out there for many more to get involved in.
00:28:45
Speaker
And I think if you go into this as a true collector who's always interested in learning more and gets that funny little feeling when we find something out we didn't know and we find these pieces that kind of reflect and tickle that, I think that's awesome.
00:29:01
Speaker
That's great.
00:29:03
Speaker
My only advice would be appreciate this, don't appropriate it.
00:29:10
Speaker
and recognize that I have indigenous ancestry, but I'm not Pueblo.
00:29:17
Speaker
I'm not Navajo.
00:29:19
Speaker
And if I have a question, I'm not going to assume the answer or presume it.
00:29:24
Speaker
I'm going to reach out to someone who has those insights and I'm going to want to seek and learn from them.
00:29:32
Speaker
And I think that's it.
00:29:33
Speaker
I encourage anybody to keep learning.
00:29:35
Speaker
I think that's part of the fun of collecting.
Challenges in Diversifying Museum Collections
00:29:37
Speaker
We're going to be learning and hopefully, hopefully broadening our collection to some degree, if not majorly, but some degree.
00:29:45
Speaker
until we can't collect anymore.
00:29:47
Speaker
So I think it's a good thing.
00:29:50
Speaker
Anything to add to that, Jesse?
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm having a difficult time parsing the question a little bit.
00:30:00
Speaker
And because I feel like there are layers there, and it can be a spectrum, right?
00:30:06
Speaker
I mean, on the one hand, what you're articulating is
00:30:11
Speaker
is almost like the model by which the British Library Museum was built.
00:30:15
Speaker
And then they had that rationale of, oh, we can preserve these histories better than the cultures themselves.
00:30:24
Speaker
And so we have a right to this material, and we're opening it up to scholars internationally.
00:30:31
Speaker
And there is some good that could come out of that, but when folks from a certain community want their stuff back, you have to take that serious.
00:30:39
Speaker
So then you get into questions of repatriation on that level.
00:30:43
Speaker
But as individual collectors who have interest in exploring other identities and other cultures and their history, I mean you see that all the time.
00:30:50
Speaker
And what I fear is that that sort of tension, that we have to balance between
00:30:57
Speaker
on the one hand, the most extreme cases of pillaging through the history of colonialism and then sealing it away.
00:31:07
Speaker
And on the other hand, somebody who is genuinely interested in the appreciation of a culture outside of their own background and as a collector uses that as a mean by which to engage with perspective that is, that, that, that
00:31:27
Speaker
they feel that they would benefit and grow as a human being from engaging with.
00:31:33
Speaker
That can be a good thing, but there's so much nuance to it, right?
00:31:38
Speaker
And so it's like, how do you approach your own collecting?
00:31:44
Speaker
Do you have, how are you, are these materials opened up to the people
00:31:54
Speaker
that would be sort of most impacted from being able to interact with or learn from these materials.
00:32:03
Speaker
How are you acquiring them?
00:32:07
Speaker
And then of course what you say about appropriation, that's so important, you know, especially when you think about indigeneity, which one of the most,
00:32:14
Speaker
egregious examples of continual appropriation by people outside of those cultures trying to step in and bond with an identity in really problematic ways.
00:32:26
Speaker
And then there's also the, you know,
00:32:30
Speaker
the risk of fetishizing, right?
00:32:32
Speaker
And that's another risk.
00:32:34
Speaker
Where's the line between appreciation and the fetishization of a culture outside your own background?
00:32:41
Speaker
But I think that as sort of a human family, we grow so much from learning about other cultures.
00:32:51
Speaker
And people are interested, you know,
00:32:54
Speaker
Black folks are interested in Chinese martial arts or Japanese interested in hip hop.
00:33:02
Speaker
There's a lot of cultural exchange going on and it's not all appropriation.
00:33:06
Speaker
That's how, in my opinion, we evolve culturally.
00:33:10
Speaker
It can be very much a good thing.
00:33:14
Speaker
And in my own experience, I collect Weta and she's not a person of color.
00:33:21
Speaker
She's a British writer, French father, lived most of her life in Italy, so very transnational figure.
00:33:28
Speaker
And it just so happened that I love her fiction.
00:33:31
Speaker
I got obsessed with it.
00:33:32
Speaker
And so I never predicted that
00:33:35
Speaker
I would be a collector of Victorian popular fiction, but then here I am.
00:33:40
Speaker
And to me, it resonates with my own personal penchant for what they call street league, or urban league.
00:33:49
Speaker
It's a guilty pleasure, but I've been reading that for many, many years.
00:33:53
Speaker
And there's a lot of synergy between my passion for
00:33:57
Speaker
for Victorian popular literature and street lit.
00:34:01
Speaker
So there's all these interesting connections.
00:34:04
Speaker
I can see that happening with other collectors.
00:34:07
Speaker
You don't know what will inspire them to be interested in something outside of their own cultural
Museum Strategies and Narrative Representation
00:34:12
Speaker
experience.
00:34:12
Speaker
But it's not always a bad thing.
00:34:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
But so there are...
00:34:20
Speaker
a lot of subtle shades.
00:34:22
Speaker
It's sort of a spectrum that you have to navigate very carefully, but you have to make concrete decisions, certainly as a curator at a museum, and Jeremy, you've had plenty of close relationships with and encounters with museums, as we've talked about.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah, not all of them are enjoyable or pleasurable.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah, and so I'm interested, when it comes to museum collections and acquisitions,
00:34:49
Speaker
you know, at the same time that we're becoming sort of more sensitive to appropriation, cultural appropriation, and looting and thinking about repatriation, you know, this is the same moment that many of these museums have a much stronger demonstrated interest in acquiring objects and artwork that tie cultures together, particularly underrepresented cultures, many of which are the same cultures around which we have concerns about appropriation and
00:35:18
Speaker
So, you know, when you think about these institutions, many of which, let's face it, have largely white boards of directors and donor bases, you know, snapping up pieces, particularly these days of African-American works of art.
00:35:36
Speaker
You know, how do you feel about that?
00:35:39
Speaker
How do you think these museums, what are the
00:35:42
Speaker
What are they doing right in their acquisition strategies?
00:35:45
Speaker
What are they missing?
00:35:46
Speaker
What should they be correcting?
00:35:49
Speaker
Jesse, do you wanna start us off with that?
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, hold on, it's a complicated topic.
00:35:54
Speaker
You know, we have entire committees devoted to thinking this through, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
It's such a complicated topic.
00:36:02
Speaker
But, you know, I would say that looking at the fuller picture, you cannot
00:36:11
Speaker
You can't sort of buck the trend and it's a good thing.
00:36:13
Speaker
You definitely want to embrace what's happening in the national conversation around bringing more diverse inclusive histories into conventional or traditional or canonical collections, right?
00:36:33
Speaker
And there's a lot of positive outcomes that can result from that, many of which I've
00:36:40
Speaker
touched upon already.
00:36:42
Speaker
But you're right, it becomes really complicated because you have, like I said, endowed funds, and when you have endowed funds, those funds are often restricted, and then that creates the framework that produces your collection strengths.
00:37:02
Speaker
And there's a certain momentum that
00:37:07
Speaker
a collection development policy will build upon from existing or core strengths.
00:37:13
Speaker
So that's one aspect.
00:37:14
Speaker
So then you have to think through the complications of how do you artfully or creatively interpret between lines of some of these stipulations so that you can pull in some of that work.
00:37:30
Speaker
So that's one of the challenges.
00:37:31
Speaker
And then,
00:37:37
Speaker
Once you determine that, you have to figure out how to acquire these materials, one, without stepping on the toes of institutions that already are strong in those areas.
00:37:52
Speaker
So you don't want to replicate what Temple has or what Penn has or in our case, what the Schomburg does.
00:38:02
Speaker
there's not really an incentive to try to create something new.
00:38:08
Speaker
So then you have to figure out how within your collection strengths, how can you build upon those strengths and be more inclusive about your approach and bring in more diverse histories from underrepresented backgrounds.
00:38:26
Speaker
So all those challenges are all right there.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's so much more than just like, oh, we're gonna buy more African American literature, or we're gonna buy more children's books that have positive representations of indigenous cultures or something like that.
00:38:42
Speaker
You wanna do those things, but there's all these sort of roadblocks and obstacles that you have to navigate through.
00:38:50
Speaker
And then once you figure all that out, you know, you want to make sure that you're dealing with vendors that are dealing in, you know, an ethical practice.
00:38:58
Speaker
And so then you have to do your research.
00:39:00
Speaker
And there are great book dealers, there are great booksellers out there that are really doing hard, difficult work of making their field more inclusive, apprenticing and training a new generation
00:39:15
Speaker
of booksellers and people that are trafficking rare books that are from diverse backgrounds that can speak to that history from personal experience and treat the subject as ethically and with as much sensitivity as possible because it's coming from their cultural experience.
00:39:37
Speaker
So those are some of the primary challenges that one has to encounter when they want to embark on that enterprise.
00:39:47
Speaker
Anything you'd like to add to that, Jeremy?
00:39:49
Speaker
No.
00:39:50
Speaker
To start......handle this from the opposite side of things.
00:39:54
Speaker
Well, to start a positive,
00:39:58
Speaker
There's progress.
Balancing Traditional and Diverse Collections
00:39:59
Speaker
Look, I'm talking right now.
00:40:00
Speaker
I'm in New York.
00:40:01
Speaker
I flew down from New Orleans.
00:40:02
Speaker
It was a pleasant flight, thank you for asking.
00:40:06
Speaker
And we're having these conversations that very much need to be had.
00:40:11
Speaker
And we do see reflections of change, and that's wonderful.
00:40:15
Speaker
And what he just described would be the ideal way to do this.
00:40:21
Speaker
Fortunately, there's some museums just that got out their pocketbook and are throwing so much money at this.
00:40:27
Speaker
And they don't even know what they're throwing it at.
00:40:30
Speaker
And, you know, I look forward to the day, two to five years, when they're scratching their head and they say, we really shouldn't have bought piece number 126, 37, and 421.
00:40:42
Speaker
What are we going to do?
00:40:45
Speaker
And I hope to God somebody, a collector possibly of color, will say, well, I know what to do with these pieces and I also can assist you with the pieces you should have bought
00:40:55
Speaker
bought and we can strengthen the museum by narrative.
00:41:02
Speaker
It matters.
00:41:03
Speaker
It matters.
00:41:04
Speaker
I, you know, so often we see a piece sell at auction and there's this fantastical write-up about it and you're scratching your head like, what are they talking about?
00:41:14
Speaker
Who wrote this?
00:41:15
Speaker
Who wrote that?
00:41:16
Speaker
Did they not see this movie?
00:41:18
Speaker
I won't quote the movie Cinderella or read the story.
00:41:23
Speaker
Did you not read it?
00:41:23
Speaker
It's not about sisterly love.
00:41:25
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah, I said it there.
00:41:29
Speaker
It's there.
00:41:30
Speaker
And you wonder, y'all didn't call anybody of color about this.
00:41:35
Speaker
You just threw the money, the bank wire, and that was it.
00:41:38
Speaker
You got the piece, but you didn't get it.
00:41:42
Speaker
So that's the negative.
00:41:44
Speaker
Sorry to be a downer, y'all, with the rain.
00:41:46
Speaker
It's just a downer.
00:41:48
Speaker
But I'm going to be truthful because I think we have to speak truth.
00:41:52
Speaker
Because otherwise I should have been staying at home drinking coffee on the
00:41:57
Speaker
right, that's it, if I can't speak truth.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree and just to follow up on that, I think, you know, it's really, really important and it's sort of, it's imperative for museums to be very, very strategic about what the narrative is around their acquisitions and how they're going to make those accessible.
00:42:25
Speaker
in a curatorial capacity or otherwise, right?
00:42:31
Speaker
Because if you do that properly and it's the right fit, magical things can happen, right?
00:42:40
Speaker
And then you have the platform to tell the best story in the best way possible.
00:42:44
Speaker
But when it's the wrong fit, it could be a disaster.
00:42:49
Speaker
It could be a public relations disaster.
00:42:54
Speaker
And we've all seen stories in the news where this happens, where something goes completely right and something goes completely wrong.
00:43:00
Speaker
And it's really, really hard to get it right and kind of easy to get it wrong.
00:43:05
Speaker
So yeah, it definitely deserves a lot of attention.
00:43:09
Speaker
And that's why I think
00:43:10
Speaker
Responsible organizations will have this work done in committees and will reach out even to outside experts, perhaps create advisory boards when exhibitions are involved or when it's a potential acquisition of a major figure or an important group that would be perhaps better suited for a different institution or a community organization or something like that.
00:43:37
Speaker
to get all the input that's necessary in making really, really impactful decisions.
00:43:43
Speaker
Yeah, so we've been talking about the acquisition of underrepresented groups.
00:43:49
Speaker
Of course, museums are still full of not only material but also curators who work in these more traditional areas.
00:43:58
Speaker
And, you know, I've heard in some quarters
00:44:03
Speaker
Curators complaining that it's impossible to raise acquisition funds for anything in these traditional areas because it's been completely eclipsed by the sort of feeding frenzy around these largely underrepresented areas.
00:44:19
Speaker
What do you think the future looks like or ought to look like for specialists in 18th century French furniture?
00:44:28
Speaker
Just to take an example.
00:44:31
Speaker
I think things balance out.
00:44:33
Speaker
That doesn't mean there's not going to be.
00:44:35
Speaker
I don't want to talk about the trajectory.
00:44:37
Speaker
Is this just a fad?
00:44:38
Speaker
Because it's never going to be a fad for me and many people.
00:44:42
Speaker
And I'm not interested again in discussing that.
00:44:44
Speaker
What I will say is the world has a strange way of balancing out.
00:44:48
Speaker
So if these things are now included.
00:44:51
Speaker
then maybe there'll be kind of an even distribution where we can look at a great 18th century chair or portrait by Gobert or something and not say, oh, but you really should have bought that painting of the person of color.
00:45:06
Speaker
You know, because I think it'll balance out.
00:45:08
Speaker
But right now is the moment for this, right?
00:45:11
Speaker
We're talking about what's happening.
00:45:13
Speaker
And for those who feel a little lost or in the wilderness, welcome to my world.
00:45:18
Speaker
It'll get better soon.
00:45:19
Speaker
Just hold your breath.
00:45:23
Speaker
We'll be fine, I think.
00:45:25
Speaker
There's optimism after so much negativity from here.
00:45:28
Speaker
Yeah, it'll balance out, but right now just ride the wave.
Approaching Diverse Cultures with Respect
00:45:34
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you, we don't have that problem at the Morgan.
00:45:36
Speaker
That's not an issue.
00:45:37
Speaker
We still have, a lot of our funds are devoted to
00:45:44
Speaker
collecting canonical figures and traditional, conventional, Euro-American, European histories.
00:45:52
Speaker
But, but, but, but, here's this huge point that I want to make in dealing with canonicity.
00:46:02
Speaker
That does not preclude, in my opinion, engagement with diverse histories.
00:46:07
Speaker
And that's why I'm so excited to be at the Morgan and have this platform.
00:46:11
Speaker
because I think we kind of fall into this way of thinking, this assumption that, oh, this is a canonical figure, right?
00:46:23
Speaker
Shakespeare, Poe, Longfellow, and they only had, only, you know, we imagine white readership, that's it, you know, as if,
00:46:32
Speaker
Nobody in the world, else in the world, was interested in that history.
00:46:35
Speaker
But it turns out people from all over the world are also interested in European and Euro-American canonical figures too.
00:46:42
Speaker
So there's a lot of stories there.
00:46:45
Speaker
I did one of my recent research projects for work that I'm currently invested in.
00:46:51
Speaker
I was looking at the question of how popular was WIDA among black Americans of the 19th century?
00:46:58
Speaker
And I was surprised to find lots and lots of articles in black periodicals about WIDA,
00:47:05
Speaker
advertisements for her books, all the stories that circulated about how much money she made and where she traveled and the controversies that she was in.
00:47:16
Speaker
They weren't paying attention.
00:47:17
Speaker
So then I looked at Dickens and Wilde, and I compared that to Francis Harper and Dunbar, and they were comparable.
00:47:26
Speaker
So all throughout history and up until the current moment,
00:47:32
Speaker
You're gonna find people of color invested in canonical works and there are ways to get at diverse stories within the histories of these figures and you start looking closely at their own biographies and you find all these intersections with multicultural narratives.
00:47:55
Speaker
Think of Beethoven and Bridgetower.
00:47:57
Speaker
It's all over the place.
00:48:02
Speaker
just to get outside the mind frame of like, okay, let's check these diversity boxes, you know, okay, we did the East Asian and now we're doing, you know, Aboriginal and now we're doing Native American.
00:48:15
Speaker
And start thinking more of, more about the connectivity of the human story.
00:48:22
Speaker
Think of America, I think of America as this sort of diverse
00:48:27
Speaker
cultural sort of quilts all interboken together with all these stories beautifully and sort of interestingly and poignantly intertwined, right?
00:48:40
Speaker
And when you pull that one thread, it's gonna tug at another.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:45
Speaker
This is one of my favorite subjects.
00:48:48
Speaker
As a silver dealer, we are engaged in thinking about global trade at just about every moment in history because you think of the sources of the raw materials, but you also think of the design sources that these silversmiths and their designers are drawing from.
00:49:06
Speaker
It's all about communication really across the globe in a period when the globe is becoming more interconnected.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, to think of it within a single box is really limiting from the connoisseurial perspective as well as from the historical perspective.
00:49:27
Speaker
And I'm interested in actually staying on that subject for a moment because
00:49:33
Speaker
um you know for centuries europeans have gone to uh tremendous lengths to acquire uh chinese porcelain and african carvings and you know and chinese merchants were lusting after venetian glass and and you know in europe and america this uh this interest came to be known as as exoticism
00:50:01
Speaker
But these days, you know, that term is seen as sort of like, you know, Orientalism.
00:50:08
Speaker
We understand that to be a sort of pejorative and diminutive way to think about material culture.
00:50:16
Speaker
And there's also, you know, there's a difference between objects of global defense nation versus objects that speak to a history of oppression, you know, here at home.
00:50:27
Speaker
But still, you know, it seems like it ought to be possible to collect
00:50:31
Speaker
outside the lines, if you will, to come at it from a place, as you were talking about earlier, from a place of respect and fascination with another people or culture rather than fetishizing or otherizing them.
Ethical Handling of Sensitive Collections
00:50:49
Speaker
And I wonder if you have any specific advice or concrete advice for how to situate yourself in a sensible way on that question.
00:51:04
Speaker
Take it away Jeremy.
00:51:05
Speaker
Oh, sorry.
00:51:07
Speaker
I would say just do due diligence.
00:51:10
Speaker
And I would also say, and it's fine if you change your mind, but pick an area of focus.
00:51:17
Speaker
What am I looking to collect?
00:51:20
Speaker
Can we talk about why I'm looking to collect this?
00:51:23
Speaker
And I think you should create this outline, and I think if you stick by this outline, and I hate to limit a collector, but sometimes we all have to limit our collections,
00:51:33
Speaker
And if you sit by these guidelines and you state, well, this is why I'm collecting this, I think that goes a long way.
00:51:41
Speaker
And it keeps you in check.
00:51:43
Speaker
Okay?
00:51:44
Speaker
And it doesn't limit you.
00:51:46
Speaker
I think it actually allows you to search
00:51:49
Speaker
for a broader spectrum of within that.
00:51:53
Speaker
But I think you have to have some limitations as a collector.
00:51:57
Speaker
Otherwise you're all over and you're squandering not just money, but also more importantly time and attention.
00:52:06
Speaker
So I would say, observe and find what you wanna somewhat focus on or may not focus, but narrow in on.
00:52:16
Speaker
And I think that would be the best.
00:52:18
Speaker
I wish I could have told myself this about 10 years ago.
00:52:23
Speaker
No, I wholeheartedly agree with that approach.
00:52:26
Speaker
And yeah, I would just echo your sentiments in that regard.
00:52:31
Speaker
But I would add, you know,
00:52:36
Speaker
in thinking through that really essential question of the why am I doing this, pay attention to the answers, right?
00:52:48
Speaker
And
00:52:51
Speaker
If there's something that you would not feel comfortable in the answer to that, expressing or communicating to the people from which these objects originated, then you need to go back to the drama more.
00:53:08
Speaker
But I do think there's a, you know, sort of a vast gulf between
00:53:15
Speaker
collecting something like the decorative arts, porcelain, you have a nice china and a tea set, and you like the aesthetic, then sort of collecting, say, Ethiopic manuscripts, because you see them as a standard symbol.
00:53:39
Speaker
And there's a gulf because one deals with a sort of sacred literature and there's a religiosity about those objects.
00:53:46
Speaker
So in that case, you have to recognize the nuance and ask yourself, okay, is this appropriate?
00:53:52
Speaker
Not to say that it's never appropriate to acquire works like that, but just really think it through.
00:53:57
Speaker
And I have this example in my mind of a collector who
00:54:06
Speaker
for a long period of time poured a lot of energy and resources into building a collection of Jim Crow era postcards.
00:54:15
Speaker
These things were hideous, racist, offensive, it's a comprehensive collection.
00:54:23
Speaker
And it came to the University of Delaware.
00:54:27
Speaker
Now, one of my first, when I was teaching in the English department there, one of my first projects was to build a course around these horrible postcards.
00:54:36
Speaker
And I had to come up with a way to teach with them responsibly.
00:54:41
Speaker
But what I found out is that the reason, the very reason why they were trying to find a way to design a class around this, this collection, was because that was, that was stipulated by the collector upon donating the collection to the institution.
00:55:00
Speaker
And I called him up directly and I said, what's the deal behind this?
00:55:03
Speaker
I wanted to get a sense, I wanted to really understand.
00:55:06
Speaker
And he told me a story about when he was at the university, it was still pretty much segregated along the main street and black folks couldn't go in the restaurants right after the university, right?
00:55:22
Speaker
And this kind of like really opened his eyes to the injustice of it.
00:55:26
Speaker
And when he encountered these postcards, he saw that this was telling a story, the quotidian racism that was part of the sort of American cultural landscape.
00:55:40
Speaker
And he felt that a collection of this nature would document
00:55:45
Speaker
that history and so it should be taught with.
00:55:48
Speaker
There should be a way that we can responsibly educate students who were not aware of this aspect of material culture in society.
00:55:59
Speaker
And you know I said it was as challenging and as painful it was to devise a course around that.
00:56:06
Speaker
I took on the challenge.
00:56:08
Speaker
And so in that case you have a collector
00:56:12
Speaker
who on the surface you would think, oh this is terrible, they must be really into fetishizing the racist history of America or maybe themselves find these caricatures entertaining or wants to promote the narratives that these caricatures are proliferating.
00:56:32
Speaker
But when I was able to tap into the rationale behind what went into building that collection, it made sense.
00:56:40
Speaker
And the course was very effective.
00:56:43
Speaker
We had really, really, really hard, challenging conversations among the students.
00:56:47
Speaker
You know, it got emotional.
00:56:49
Speaker
And the way that I was able to responsibly handle these materials is that
00:56:55
Speaker
We all did a whole bunch of background reading into the history of blackface, negative racial stereotypes, caricature, before we even looked at the objects, right?
00:57:08
Speaker
So we had that grounding, right?
00:57:12
Speaker
Engage with works like Spike Lee's Mamboozled and all that.
00:57:15
Speaker
So by the time that we encountered the objects, we were able to have
00:57:22
Speaker
real adult conversations about what we were seeing that was grounded in generations of scholarship that went into understanding and unpacking how this came to be.
00:57:35
Speaker
And I'm glad for it.
00:57:37
Speaker
And so I was grateful in this circumstance that this collection was produced as egregious as the images that I encountered came off to me.
00:57:50
Speaker
And
00:57:51
Speaker
And so it always comes to that question of the why.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:00
Speaker
That's all for now.
00:58:01
Speaker
Thanks so much to the Winner Show for hosting this event and to Jesse Erickson and Jeremy Simeon for sharing your insight with us.
00:58:10
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
00:58:16
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:58:20
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.