Witness and Resistance
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts impressed me on my last visit. I know the place pretty well (and used to work there) and I’m not used to them making new and direct statements. But with their latest series of shows, especially. “’I must tell you what I saw’: Objects of witness and resistance,” they have.
What is the role of fine art museums in our society? For a long time, they have tried to act as neutral showcases of “fine art” (a category they define pretty strictly), unwilling to consciously enter political frays, leaving the seemingly provocative territory to museums of history or modern art. Of course, places with massive collections don’t lend themselves to any one particular narrative. They pride themselves on being comprehensive, encyclopedias. And, of course, any narrative could limit who sees the museum as “theirs,” or who will go inside to experience their contents (and as someone who has worked in fundraising, I would speculate that this is in no small way connected to fears of losing their donors). The idea that any museum could be truly neutral is, however, ridiculous. Through the very acts of collection and display, museums create a narrative around what matters. Whose stories are we telling? And how are we telling them? The grand art museums of America (and Europe, and the world) have kept this story pretty western, male, and white, a collection of the traditional “great art” canon (like I love John Singleton Copley, but how many of those portraits do we really need to see to understand his work? Variety would be nice).
Some of that is changing, in big and small ways. The new Matisse exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts tries to discuss themes of colonialism through African and Asian objects Matisse collected and how they influenced his work. They handle the topic fairly well (especially given the space provided). The Metropolitan Museum of Art will, for the first time, display Native American Art in the Art of the Americas wing, integrating it with the more “traditional” (aka white) American canon (finally art made by Native Americans will be placed on equal footing to art made by white people about Native Americans. It only took 400 years). I’m sure there are more positive steps happening across the country- these are just the few I have personally encountered in the last couple of weeks. But it’s still a pretty small splash.
All of this summary to say that “Objects of witness and resistance” stands out. According to an interview with curator Phoebe Segal in Boston Magazine, this exhibit was conceived to stand alongside the exhibit of Henryk Ross’s photography of the Lodz Ghetto, his negatives buried and hidden from the Nazis to be unearthed years later. These photographs are incredibly moving and displayed to great effect, with Ross’s official photographs from his employment by the Nazis alongside the illegal photographs he took as acts of resistance, of witness. Then, in a small room after you leave Ross’s photographs behind, stand the 8 objects of “Witness and resistance,” the room organized with the goal of easing visitors out of the Ludz ghetto and into the rest of the museum. These objects stretch from ancient Assyria to 20th century atrocities. Six are from the MFA’s own collections, including J. M. W. Turner’s famous Slave Ship. Through putting all of these objects together, the curators make a narrative. This differs from many other exhibits, like that of Ross’s photographs, where the artists supply a narrative themselves. Here, the museum decides to do the work of storytelling on purpose, to a specific end.
“Witness and resistance” was curated by the Greek and Roman curator but sits in the contemporary wing. This makes sense to me on a sort of art history level — Greek and Roman art, more than more modern art, tends to encompass not just “fine art” but objects as well (while contemporary exhibits are generally more willing to be provocative). This exhibit includes a Turner painting, sure, but also a chalk mold owned by a family that survived the Armenian Genocide (on loan from the nearby Armenian Museum of America), fine art and manufacturing objects given equal standing based on what they tell us. The original owners of the chalk mold survived the Armenian Genocide by making chalk for the Turkish government and brought this mold with them when they finally fled to remember, to continue to tell that story. The title of the exhibit, “I must remember,” as well as two of the objects displayed (the chalk mold and the painting Good Hope Road by Arshile Gorky) relate directly to the Armenian Genocide. Acts of witness to this genocide are especially poignant, as the Turkish government still denies that it happened and others attempt to debate its reality (though there is really no debate). When people try to erase the atrocities done, witness matters more than ever.
As a history minded person, I struggled in art history courses because I just didn’t really care about technique and artistic merit, but wanted to know the stories each piece told. This exhibit scratches that itch for me. The interpretive panels talk less about artistry and more about historical significance, about what these objects tells us. A beautiful 19th-century Chinese altar vase sits in the front of the room. Over the delicate pattern, somebody painted praises to Mao in bold, red script. This obscures some of the original artistry of the piece, but is also the reason any of that artistry survived, the message added in an attempt to save the vase from destruction by the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution. This is a story of art, of legacy, of cultural memory, and of the acts taken by individuals all over the world and across time to preserve some piece of that, to fight back against destruction.
As we see massive cultural and heritage destruction in Syria, in Iraq, in conflict areas on every continent, we need to see stories of this kind of courage and purposeful memory, the victories and the tragedies. The fights waged by the international community but also by brave people on the ground. Everywhere that there is destruction there is also resistance. There are always those who stand up and fight back. The MFA is honoring those stories with these two exhibits. The MFA is also opening a conversation about how memory is consciously made, encouraging us to think of our roles in that construction (or destruction). I hope more museums will follow suit. And I hope more people will heed these stories and stand against the loss of these crucial stories. I hope we will see and remember.
