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Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900, edited by Jan Marsh; pp. x + 208. Aldershot and Burlington: Lund Humphries in Association with Manchester Art Gallery and Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 2005, £35.00, $70.00.
The exhibition Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900 opened in the Manchester City Art Gallery in 2005 and then traveled to its only other venue, the Birmingham Museum and Gallery. The innovative nature of the show is highlighted in the catalog's forward by David Dabydeen, who sees the exhibition as part of a long overdue acknowledgment of images of blacks in art history. This exhibition follows on some recent efforts to highlight these issues in UK museums, for example the Victoria and Albert Museum's Victorian Vision (2001) and more recent Black British Style, which toured to Manchester, Leicester, and Bradford in 2005. Although perhaps not immediately evident from the title, Black Victorians focuses on representations of black people-what the show is missing is representations by black artists. The black/Native sculptor Edmonia Lewis, for example, was not included in the show; unfortunately, the parameters of the grouping were works that were seen in Britain during the Victorian period, and although Lewis traveled to Italy, her work was not exhibited in Britain.
A luxuriously produced hardbound catalog was published by Lund Humphries to accompany the exhibition. Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900 includes color illustrations of a remarkable range of objects, from photography and print, to watercolors, to oils...