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Williamstown, MA—Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will present Representing Slavery, an exhibition featuring the work of six American artists, from the nineteenth century to the present. Representing Slavery presents artistic reconstructions of slavery that establish and alter the broader contours of race, sexuality, gender, subjectivity, national identification, and political power in the United States. Selected sketches, illustrations, drawings, and paintings by Kara Walker, Winslow Homer, Thomas Nast, Glenn Ligon, Tim Rollins, and Adrian Piper will be included in the exhibition. Drawn from Williams College Museum of Art’s permanent collection, this exhibition was created to provide primary course material for Political Science Professor Mike Reinhardt’s spring 2003 American Studies seminar at Williams College. Representing Slavery will be on view from September 13-December 21, 2003.

“It is a pleasure and privilege to participate in a stimulating visual exchange and experience,” says Director Linda Shearer. “It is my hope that this investigation of ‘how and why inherited representations are being reworked’ will give everyone who comes to the exhibition new insights into both contemporary art and the academic process at a liberal arts college.”

The Interdisciplinary Nature of Art

The art on display in Representing Slavery offers a wide range of interpretations on the subject, based on the artists’ varied perspectives of the institution of slavery in the United States. The divergent nature of these representations provides ample ways to discuss and interpret slavery in America. The art in Representing Slavery was the core of the spring 2003 senior seminar in American Studies at Williams College. Professor Mark Reinhardt’s course investigated these American representations of slavery, while probing the connection between cultural production and political power. The course also examined the term representation, a key word in both aesthetics and politics. Each student was charged with making sense of the images through classroom analyses and in a brief essay addressed to the museum’s visitors. Selected essays may be read in the exhibition’s companion brochure, Representing Slavery. This brochure, which reflects the museum’s commitment to providing support to the Williams College curriculum, was made possible by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.

This exhibition contains material that is adult in nature.

Related Exhibition and Programs

Representing Slavery, curated by Vivian Patterson and Mark Reinhardt, is a companion exhibition to Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress. Kara Walker will be the keynote speaker at the Plonsker Family Lecture in Contemporary Art on Saturday, October 25, 2003. Other participants include Hamza Walker, Director of Education at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and moderator Mark Reinhardt, Professor of Political Science at Williams College. The lecture begins at 2 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, Williams College. A reception in the WCMA galleries will follow.

Publicity Images Available

Publicity images for Representing Slavery and other current exhibitions are available for use. The images include Tim Rollins’s Diary of a Slave Girl (After Harriet Jacobs). Images can be found at http://www.wcma.org/press.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Suzanne Augugliaro, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; WCMA@williams.edu