Atlantic Slavery and the Arts

Art historians, curators, and artists have demonstrated an increasing interest in the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. This recent attention is motivated by the growing field of slavery studies and the protests challenging the ways these two human atrocities are memorialized in societies where slavery existed. This trend also responds to the recent developments in the discipline of art history in which European painting and sculpture have been overrepresented in scholarship. Considered the greatest forms of art, paintings and sculpture rarely represented enslaved peoples and when they did, bondspeople were frequently portrayed in submissive positions. More often, enslaved peoples were depicted in mediums considered minor arts such engravings and cartes-de-visite that neither deserved to be studied by art historians nor should occupy a visible place in art museums. But this landscape has changed. Artists such as Romuald Hazoumé, Grada Kilomba, Kara Walker, Rosana Paulino, Nona Faustine, Charles Fréger, and Jota Mombaça have been addressing slavery in their works. Curators have also embraced this vibrant production in exhibitions such as Afro-Atlantic Histories (Museu de Arte de São Paulo, 2018) that traveled to Washington DC, Houston and Los Angeles, and Slavery (Rijksmuseum, 2021). Likewise, museums such as the National Gallery in London started to gradually expose their own ties to transatlantic slavery. Drawing on this new dynamic scholarship, artworks, and exhibitions, this panel invites submissions focusing on visual representations and artworks engaging histories of slavery, as well as curatorial projects and museographies addressing slavery and the slave trade.