By Erika Huber
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
The Baltimore Museum of Art hosted a panel discussion called “Seeing Color: A Conversation About Race & Art” Saturday afternoon in an effort to bring Baltimoreans together for what moderator Rodney Foxworth called an “uneasy” conversation.
An audience of a little over 100 people sat in the BMA auditorium as panelists Dr. Sheri Parks, Dr. James Smalls, Ailish Hopper and Susan Harbage Page spoke about art and race as they have experienced, observed and expressed it.
Seven months after the Baltimore demonstrations that followed the death of Freddie Gray, the panelists said an open dialogue for all races is a crucial first step to make progress on issues like racial injustice.
Hopper, a Goucher University professor and poet, acknowledged that her “whiteness” put her in somewhat of an awkward position during a conversation about race.
“One of the dangers of being a white person speaking publicly about race is that it [may seem] whiteness wants to take over, when in fact much of what I have learned has come from folk of color,” Hopper said. “I am because they are.”
For much of Hopper’s speech, a photo of an art piece depicting a black figure hanging from the ceiling by its feet was projected on the screen behind her. She analyzed the artwork and discussed the burdens that come with addressing race in art.
“We are, each of us, worlds,” Hopper said. “One of the challenges of art that tries to look at race is that it tries to make sense of what, at some level, can not be made sense of.”
Hopper proposed the idea that people are both physically and metaphysically their race, but race has taken on an abstract form in society.
“Truth be told, race is just what it invented to make sure some of us, most of us, can be controlled, divided and powerless,” Hopper said.
Throughout the speeches given by the panelists a number of disturbing images were shown, including lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan.
Page, who is an artist, said she often gets nervous when speaking on race. She then showed photographs of KKK hoods she made out of unusual materials like Wal-Mart bags, pink floral patterns and silk. These hoods were created to show that a racist or white supremacist can be anyone.
Page also spoke about the white box she carried with her everywhere for a period of time to understand how it feels for a black person to blatantly carry their color with them wherever they go.
Parks, the associate dean for Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, believes that Baltimore is in “a period of revelation” but also has much to do in the process of racial equality. Parks also addressed the impact art has on the black community.
“We are trying to understand the artifacts and how to exhibit them and basically how to not freak black people out,” Parks said. “There is now a problem with black people being traumatized by historical and artistic displays.”
Black people live in a different social reality, Parks said. And while forms of art that show black suffering can be disturbing, Parks said it is necessary to put them on display because they are part of the black identity and reality.
“Black people carry slavery with them, they carry Jim Crow with them,” Parks said. “If you carry slavery and Jim Crow with you every day, there is no forgetting.”
Before the panel opened up for audience questions, one audience member interrupted to ask “how is the picture of a black person hanging from the ceiling art?”
When Parks asked the audience member what her definition of art is, she responded with, “something that is beautiful, not that.”
The panel and audience members discussed what they view as art and that art is not always meant to be beautiful or pleasing, but is often meant to make the viewer think or feel.
Paul Rucker, whose racially-focused exhibit “Rewind” was on display at the BMA, said from the audience that the“Seeing Color” conversation must be had outside of panel discussions like this one and inserted into regular curriculum.
“People came here because they are interested in talking about [race], but what we need to do is have the conversation with people who are not interested in talking about the subject,” Rucker said.
Rucker’s art is made up of many controversial issues and strong images of the racial injustice experienced by Black America. These images include stringless violins representing silence, tapestries with images of lynching and Trayvon Martin and several KKK figures dressed in varying patterns, even kente cloth.
The display, which left the BMA Sunday, is not meant to be liked, according to Rucker’s website.
“We have systems repeating over and over again,” Rucker said. “The problems we had after the ’68 riots are the same problems we had in 2015 and the same problems we will have later unless we have an informed conversation about systemic racism, power structures in America and how we got here. Until we have that fully-informed conversation, we’re going to have a lot of problems and people will be totally unaware of where their privilege and power came from.”