Content area
Full Text
"For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights." Organized by the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, http://www.umbc.edu/cadvc/foralltheworld/.
Traveling exhibition. 3,500-5,000 sq. ft. Maurice Berger, project director and curator. Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C, June 10-Nov. 27, 2011; Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Md., Nov. 2012-March 2013; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., April-July 2013; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nev., Fall 2013.
"For All the World to See" is a major exhibition scheduled to travel to several national venues through winter 2013. I caught up with it in January 2011 at Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History.
The exhibition opens with footage of the famed photographer Gordon Parks loading his camera, or "weapon of choice," as the opening text panel argues. For Parks, the camera was not just for capturing images, but a tool to confront racism and segregation. The exhibition argues that, like Parks, civil rights leaders and activists were also skillful "image-makers" who used visual media to persuade Americans to support their cause. The exhibition uses objects and a variety of media as historical documents in an attempt to prove that visual culture shaped and transformed the struggle for racial equality during the civil rights movement.
Using a generous chronological span for the civil rights era (the late 1940s to the mid-1970s), the exhibit begins by laying a contextual foundation, highlighting commonly seen images of African Americans in American popular culture both before and during the movement. One of the very first images visitors see is Joe (played by Paul Robeson) in the 1936 film adaptation of Show Boat. Robeson's Joe is accompanied by the image of Beulah the housekeeper from the 1950s situation comedy The Beuhh Show (Beulah was played Ethel Waters, Hattie McDaniel, and Louise Beavers during its run). These clips highlight not just the types of roles available to African American actors but also the predominant images of blacks in American culture. Labels inform visitors that Joe and Beulah are emblematic of the status quo of black imagery - the servant,...