Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
Art and Art History
Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art
Oxford University, 2019-2020
The Primers | The Photographers | The Progressives | The Pragmatists
ABOUT
In this four-part lecture series sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art at Oxford University, I examine the central role portraiture played in fostering social change in the United States from the 1890s through the 1950s. Drawing from my forthcoming book, Portraits of Noteworthy Character, I consider the strategic visual campaigns generated by individuals and social institutions that used the portrait to advance their progressive political ideologies. From the etiquette texts used at historically black colleges to the post cards produced by Hull-House to the Harmon Foundation’s exhibition of “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” these lectures explore the ways in which the portrait was employed to build social relationships and negotiate modern subjectivity. Each lecture begins with an inquiry of the Obama portraits, looking to the ways in which social values and cultural capital are generated by these iconic identities.
These lectures, usually delivered in person at Worcester College in Oxford, were lived streamed via YouTube during the Covid-19 lockdown and provided a much-needed connection to colleagues and my community in both the UK and US. As the horrific murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor played out in the media, fomenting protest and dialogue against racial injustice and the profound inequities in US society, the quandary around representation—its possibilities as well as its limitation—became all the more urgent and relevant. This work is inspired by many critical thinkers, but scholar Tina Campt’s* conception of futurity—the recognition of the charge of images to insist and compel us into action—was especially present in my mind.
I would like to think of the portrait as an imperative to see, acknowledge and appreciate the humanity of one another and through such acts, we can strive for “the future that you want to see, right now, in the present”—specifically one in which black lives matter to everyone and where we work together as a society to make reparations and understand how our past impacts our future.
The Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities adapted the series to fit their on-going program and I am so appreciative of their support. I am also grateful for the support that Columbia has continued to invest in this project and look forward to seeing the text in print next year!
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*Tina M. Campt, Listening to Images. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (2017), 17.