Professor Wendy S. Walters Curates Exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By
Rebecca Pinwei Tseng
March 03, 2022
Walters headshot

Associate Professor of Writing and Director of Nonfiction Wendy S. Walters recently curated an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition, titled Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, will be available for public visitation from March 10, 2022, to March 5, 2023.

Fictions of Emancipation is the first exhibition at The Met to examine Western sculpture in relation to the histories of transatlantic slavery, colonialism, and empire. The exhibition is organized around a single object, the marble bust Why Born Enslaved! by French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Why Born Enslaved!, sculpted in the wake of American emancipation and 20 years after the abolition of slavery in the French Atlantic, was shaped by antislavery imagery, the development of 19th-century ethnographic theories of racial difference, and France's colonial history in Africa. Fictions of Emancipation explores the sculpture's place within these contexts and also features 35 works of art that give an in-depth look at portrayals of Black enslavement, emancipation, and personhood "with an aim toward challenging the notion that representation in the wake of abolition constitutes a clear moral or political stance."

Fictions of Emancipation, organized by Elyse Nelson, Assistant Curator in The Met’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, features Walters as the guest curator. Walters’s poetry about Carpeaux’s sculpture previously appeared in a 2019 installment of MetCollects, an online series that celebrates the museum's newest works of art.

“It’s my hope that this exhibition will inspire further conversations about the influence and implications of 19th-century art that depicts enslavement," Walters stated. "Representation is a significant gesture that is shaped by aesthetic and historical contexts, and both shape what a work is conveying.”

Walters is a Creative Capital Awardee in literary nonfiction and the author of three books, the most recent being Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal (Sarabande Books, 2015). A recipient of fellowships from NYFA, the Ford Foundation, BRIClab and the Smithsonian Institute, she has a broad history of engagements with writing in and about performative contexts. Her lyrical work has been performed widely, including at Carnegie Hall, Joe’s Pub, Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst in Denmark, The Institute for Advanced Study, and the Pittsburgh Symphony.