Reflections on the Middle Passage

In 1807, the British outlawed the slave trade on the high seas. In theory, this act should have ended Middle Passage experiences for enslaved Africans bound for the Americas, but of course this was not the immediate outcome. New illegal human imports from Africa were still arriving in the United States up until the eve of the Civil War. The traffic in slaves was abiding as long as it was profitable, despite the effort two hundred years ago to crush it. Middle Passage refers to the period of time between when captured, purchased or otherwise imprisoned Africans left the shores of their native continent and when they set foot on soil in the Americas.

The six weeks or so at sea was horrific with up to half of the cargo of enslaved Africans dying en route, some from the exceedingly unhealthy conditions on the ships, some from brutal treatment at the hands of their captors, some from despair-driven suicide, and still others from diseases. Middle Passage was a tragic ordeal of Biblical proportions, yet it was also the prelude to an extraordinary resurgence of creativity and humanity by its descendents in the “new” world. Reflections on the Middle Passage acknowledges the terror of that experience and pays homage to our forebears who survived it to flourish here.

Three works anchor the exhibition: The Negro spirituals speak of life and death by Jimmy James Greene, an illustration from Middle Passage by Tom Feelings, and a passage from the long poem Middle Passage by African American poet Robert Hayden. Both of the visual art items are drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. Especially compelling is The Negro spirituals speak of life and death for it is at once an altar and a slave ship. It’s overall form may be seen as a Gothic arch enclosing a shrine, or as a ship deck viewed from above. At the foot of the arch, Greene has evoked more strongly memories of the slave ship by recreating the planking of the deck and exposing the dark revulsion of the hole, that dreaded cramped space below the deck. Both above and below are corpses recalling those who died at sea and were often feed to the sharks. Barbed wire and nails emphasize the brutality of the ocean interlude. Rising in waves above the ship’s deck are generations of survivors of the Middle Passage who evincenot only the power of hope, but also the resilience of life that fired the bosom of those Africans.

Greene has embodied hope in Christian iconography with a black hand reaching high against a blue sky within a Romanesque window surmounted by the image of Christ offered forward by caring hands beneath the apex of the Gothic arch. Also within the apex of the arch is a small relief image of Africa, the ancestral home and destination of the dematerializing bodies of the dead that ascent along the frame’s outer edges.

Reflections on the Middle Passage will be on display throughout the summer.

top

Enter-ACTION is a new exhibition created by award-winning, mixed-media artist Maya Freelon.

Freelon, who interrogates social issues by juxtaposing traditional and contemporary media, transforms the museum into an interactive installation. Working with tissue paper, her sculptures reach from the ceiling to the floor taking on monumental proportion, yet their fragility and anthropomorphic qualities remain exposed as they shift gently with the fluctuating air current. “Maya’s organically-inspired mixed-media compositions offer fresh and dynamic ways of experiencing color, transparency and incidental light effects all within a strikingly impressive visual fluidity. We are delighted to present this early career exhibition for an artist of growing significance” said NCAAA museum director Edmund Barry Gaither.

The NCAAA has the honor of being the first venue to introduce the intense, beautifully abstracted video 'FREE ALL Political Prisoners!', which is a tribute to the many people who have been, and continue to be incarcerated because of their political beliefs, activism or threat to the dominate power structure. The video includes a soundtrack of speeches from revolutionaries including Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur.

Maya Freelon’s desire to share her art with the world has garnered her exhibitions at the Combes Gallery in Paris, France, Rhonda Schaller Studio in New York City and an invitation to show her work at the National Art Gallery of Namibia. A 2006 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alum, Maya Freelon is also the founder of the award winning, community arts collaborative, Make Your Mark Art, www.makeyourmarkart.org

For more information go to www.mayafreelon.com

SURPRISES presents many works from the museum’s collection that have never been shown. Among them is an eight-by-eight feet untitled painting by Ellen Banks who previously was active in Boston. Her mid-career paintings were typically formed from flat geometric shapes rendered in a narrow palette of basic colors.

They call to mind formalist art of the sixties in their preference for primary colors and shapes. At the time that Ms. Banks painted the aforementioned work, she was also making tapestries using similar compositional principles.

Later, Ms Banks shifted her attention to printed music, which now increasingly gave order to her abstractions that became, in a sense, painted equivalents of music scores. Beethoven, Andante, another work on display by Ms. Banks, is typical of this development. Both works may come as surprises to those who expect that African American art is always figurative.

Negro: USA, by Charles White

Nat Turner, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, by Charles White (detail

Charles White’s masterful Nat Turner: yesterday, today and tomorrow is again on display because it is such a major work, but never before shown are five smaller lithographic prints made by White in l946 and published as part of the portfolio Negro: USA.

There are other surprises in store as well, but you will have to come to see them.

top