UPDATED: Jan. 15, 2020 at 4:02 p.m.

SU professor Joan Bryant traveled to California multiple times to see photographs depicting images of everyday life during the Jim Crow era and select which ones to include in an exhibit at SUArt Galleries.  

She sorted through approximately 5,000 photographs from art collector George R. Rinhart’s private collection. This only scratched the surface of the nearly 2 million images Rinhart has in his collection.  

The faculty and staff of SUArt Galleries then worked together to individually matte and frame the chosen 150 photographs as part of the gallery’s new exhibit, titled “Black Subjects in Modern Media Photography: Works from the George R. Rinhart Collection.”  

The exhibit that Bryant is curating is one of three exhibits that will be on show at SUArt Galleries from Jan. 16 to March 13. The additional two exhibits are “Masterpieces of the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting from Regional Collections” and “Making History, Justifying Conquest: Depictions of Native Americans in American Book Company Textbooks.”  

There will be a formal reception for the exhibits on Jan. 30 from 5:30-7:30 p.m., where Bryant will be giving a lecture. She is also organizing a similar exhibit at SU’s Community Folk Art Center, which opens on Feb. 10.  

“There is no single image that is representative of the 150 I chose,” Bryant said. “That’s how varying they are.” 

The SUArt Galleries exhibit includes photographs that portray life during the Jim Crow era in the United States and African and Caribbean colonies. The upcoming exhibit at CFAC is titled “Black & White: Narratives of the Civil Rights Era,” with photographs from the Rinhart collection that show life during the Civil Rights era.  

Vanja Malloy, the director and chief curator at SUArt Galleries, hopes that the exhibit pushes conversations on how images shape our culture and perceptions of the world.  

“I think with awareness of how images can create bias and promote and perpetuate racism, we can also stop its power somewhat.” Malloy said. “If you’re more aware, you can be critical, and if you’re critical, you can incite change versus when you’re a passive viewer then you can’t.” 

Meanwhile, the “Masterpieces of the Seventeenth–Century Dutch Painting from Regional Collections” exhibit is being curated by SU professor of art history Wayne Franits and his art history graduate students. The exhibit features 25 Dutch paintings from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts and other regional museums and collections.  

Franits’ graduate students researched the paintings he chose and wrote wall texts for the exhibition. This was strategically done so that the students were able to get firsthand application of what they learned in class. The students were also able to help plan the layout of the exhibition and even had the opportunity to handle the paintings, Franits said.  

“It’s rare that one has the opportunity to look at 17th-century Dutch paintings firsthand in Syracuse,” Franits said.  

Finally, Julia Jessen, a master’s candidate in art history and museum studies at SU, is curating the exhibit “Making History, Justifying Conquest: Depictions of Native Americans in American Book Company Textbooks.” The show features the illustrations of Native Americans in textbooks published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that justify Euro and Euro-American conquest, Jenson said.  

All of the illustrations are from SU’s permanent art collection and SU Libraries. Jessen said that the marginalization of Native Americans in these textbook illustrations is dangerous because they are often subtle and unrecognized by viewers.  

“By calling attention to these images and discussing these things that we’re talking about, the inaccuracies and the calculated ways in which they’re presenting one group’s version of history, we can start to more fully consider how these images are used and misused to construct historical narratives,” Jessen said.  

In addition to the three main exhibits, the short film “People of a Darker Hue” by Carrie Mae Weems will be playing continuously in the museum. The 14-minute short looks at the impacts of police brutality in communities of color.  

SUArt Galleries has been working on a five-year plan with the goal of drawing more people into the shows and displaying work from a wide variety of artists, Malloy said.  

“We’re looking at our collection, and we’re saying we want better representation,” Malloy said.

Published on January 14, 2020 at 9:41 pm

Contact Sydney: sabergan@syr.edu