Sarah Lewis on Ways of Seeing Race in America
“When it comes to the unspeakable facts in the history of America, it’s largely the artists who’ve been willing to show us what others would not,” the art historian said in an interview with Hyperallergic.
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This moment offers an opportunity to salute the unsung early cultural workers and civil rights workers in the United States who understood the power of culture for moments like this. Freedman Henry Morris Murray was really the first person to understand how monuments were used to declare the extension of Jim Crow rule before anyone else. He publishes his book in 1916 because he understands that he is living in a regime that is unspeakable to such a degree that he looks to the signals and signs that the erection of these monuments created. He recognizes that these public works are speaking for the federal government via proxy.
For example, during Wilson’s administration, the Lincoln Memorial was under construction, but so was Georgia Stone Mountain dedicated to the Confederacy in 1915. This is a moment when Woodrow Wilson was screening The Birth of a Nationat the White House. Here we began to see the function and true roles that monuments play in the cultural landscape. What we need to do now is to really salute the scaffolding, the foundations, and the writing of people like Murray who can offer us the guides to think through why culture matters so much today. Culture is how we understand the world.
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