I like history when I came to this
program my understanding for art history
changed even more. I learned about
Radcliffe Bailey, Kehinde Wiley, people like
that that make art to tie us to our
ancestry. Just getting to know like all
these black artists that I didn't even
know about was just enlightening. Art
made by people of color is very
important because it makes people of color
feel welcomed in art spaces and that's
something that sometimes is uncommon
due to the fact that there's a lack of
diversity and staff in those places that
house the art.
Our [inaudible] for this assignment was to create a label for
an art piece that we chose and we had to
present it in five to eight minutes. My
piece was less influenced by Amalia Maki
in 1999 and I thought it was really
important because Amelia Maki was a
Spelman professor and she also had her
work recognized at Spelman. I chose this
particular painting because it
reminded me of myself. The
African-American woman that was in the
post - she kind of reminded me of my
grandmother. The artist Francis Chris
told a story in the painting I wanted to
like research and learn more about it. I
chose the piece Trails and Trials a
Century's Journey to a Dream by Roberto
Lugo. This piece kind of alludes to the
work called the Centennial Vase and so
the High Museum commissioned Roberto
Lugo to make a vase that portrayed
Atlanta's history and he incorporates
modern-day issues with it. I'm an artist
at my school, it's one of my majors so I
like working with sculpture more. My
piece is a young woman of Trastevere
aged 25 by Charles Courtier. He was a
French ethnographic sculptor and he was
trying to show the ubiquity of beauty in
various races. The piece I chose for our individual project - it was a bowl by Paulding
Farnham. It was for the Paris Exposition
Universelle which was in 1900. I'm
especially interested in decorative art
to the early 20th century because they
have a lot of
non-western influences because you don't
see that any years prior with a lot of
American and European decorative arts.
I got to meet different curators and
hear their stories and it kind of
inspired me to like want to find what I
want to do when I get older and like
pursue my dream. I hope in the future
that art - it becomes more diverse and
that not only is our art in museums but
we're also having positions of
leadership within those museums because
that could really create change. The
Sisterhood of Spelman was brought
through in the college experience. I just
didn't realize how much work went into
it in terms of like actually getting the
exhibit opened and up and running. I already had this
mindset of what African art was but when
I came here it was so broad it's not
just wooden figures and just masks it's
so many things and that's what's
actually really making me want to be a
curator now.
