The document discusses race and its impact on art history, highlighting various artworks and artists that reflect contemporary perspectives on the art historical canon. Notable pieces include reimaginings of classical works by Yinka Shonibare and Kehinde Wiley, as well as the implications of colonialism in museum collections as articulated by Fred Wilson. The text emphasizes the need for decolonial approaches in museums to address hidden aspects of coloniality in exhibits.

1. Race-ing Art History:
Contemporary Reflections on
the Art Historical Canon

2. Yinka Shonibare

3. Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, 1748.

4. Yinka Shonibare, Mr. and Mrs.
Andrews without their Heads, 1998.
Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews,
1748.

5. Yinka Shonibare, The Swing
(after Fragonard), 2001.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing,
1766.

6. Kehinde Wiley

7. Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon
Crossing the Alps, 1800.
Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the
Army Over the Alps, 2005.

8. Peter Paul Rubens, Equestrian
Portrait of King Philip II of Spain,
c. 1635.
Wiley, Equestrian Portrait of King Philip
II, 2009.

9. Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres, Napoleon I on His
Imperial Throne, 1806.
Wiley, Ice T, 2005.

10. Abelina Galustian

11. Jean Léon Gerôme,
Moorish Bath, 1883.
Frederick Arthur Bridgman, The
Bath, c. 1890.
Eugène Delacroix, Algerian Women
in their Apartments, 1834.

12. Gerôme, The Slave Market,1867.

13. Abelina Galustian, Womansword
series (quoting Gerôme’s Slave
Market), 2000.
Gerôme, The Slave Market, 1867.

14. Ettore Cerone, Examining Slaves, 1890.
Galustian, Womansword series
(quoting Cerone’s Examining Slaves),
2000.

15. Galustian, Womansword series
(quoting von Chlebowski’s
Purchasing a Slave), 2000–1.
Stanislaus von Chlebowski,
Purchasing a Slave, 1879.

16. Ken Gonzales-Day

17. Ken Gonzales-
Day, Erased
Lynching series
and Wonder
Gaze
installation,
2000–13

18. Gonzales-Day, Tombstone, 2006.

19. Gonzales-Day, East First Street, 2006.

20. Gonzales-Day, At daylight the miserable man
was carried to an oak, 2007.

21. Gonzales-Day, Momento Gonzales-Day, Aaron, 2007.
Mori,2007.

22. Installation view (At Daylight, left; Aaron, right).

23. Fred Wilson

24. “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of
barbarism.” — Walter Benjamin

25. Wunderkammer, cabinets of curiosities.

26. Crystal Palace, World’s Fair, London, 1851.

27. Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889.

28. Humans on exhibition, nineteenth-twentieth
century.

29. Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum,1992.

30. Wilson, Mining the Museum,1992.

31. Wilson, Metalwork 1723–1880 in Mining the Museum, 1992.

32. Wilson, Cabinet Making 1820–1910 in Mining the Museum, 1992.

33. Wilson, Modes of Transport 1770–1910 in Mining the Museum, 1992.

34. Wilson, Cabinet Making 1820–1910,
1992.
Shonibare, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews
Without Their Heads, 1998.

35. “The decolonial option is an option and, as such, it makes evident
that there is no right or natural way to define what museums shall
do. Museums should offer spaces for many kinds of interpretive
activity (dialoguing or contesting each other). The decolonial
option displaces the ‘spectacle’ and ‘performance’ of museum
exhibits and installations and brings to the foreground what
‘spectacle’ and ‘performance’ hides: coloniality, that is, the
darker side of modernity of which museums are a paramount
institution.”
— Walter Mignolo, “Museums in the Colonial Horizon of Modernity:
Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum (1992).”