U.Va. museum exhibit looks back from slaves' view

Exhibit shows plantations from slave perspective@@
'Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art'
CHARLOTTESVILLE - "Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art," now at the University of Virginia Art Museum, was conceived four years ago by two colleagues in search of an exhibition concept they could call their own.
Angela D. Mack, chief curator of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., mentioned to U.Va. art professor Maurie McInnis that a new book, "The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings," was peppered with illustrations from the Gibbes collection.
McInnis, who specializes in 18th- and early 19th-century American art, was intrigued but discounted the book's concept as an exhibition launch pad.
It concentrated on 19th-century plantation life and told its story from the slave owner's perspective.
Other museums had been there and done that.
What if Mack and McInnis came up with an exhibition that reflected on plantation life through art created from the 18th century to today?
Furthermore, what if the show told the story of plantation slavery from the slaves' point of view?
That's what "Landscape of Slavery" is all about.
As far as guest curator McInnis knows, this is the first comprehensive survey of art specifically depicting plantation slavery from a slave perspective.
Here is some orientation for the exhibit:
The show: 92 works, mostly paintings, displayed in an introductory first-floor gallery and four second-floor galleries. One-third of the artists are African-American.
Organization: The works on the second floor are grouped under four themes — Protest, Politics, Nostalgia and Identity, each with its own explanatory panel — without regard to chronology or geography.
Smallest and oldest: 14 undated oil-on-paper views of plantation life that may have been painted as early as 1790. Charleston artist Thomas Corum's paintings are meticulously detailed, but they are little larger than postcards.
Largest, newest and by far the heaviest: Chapel Hill, N.C., sculptor Juan Logan's 2004 cast ductile iron sculpture, "Foundation," which consists of 42 giant bricklike blocks weighing 90 pounds each and arranged in a stepped-pyramid formation.
Seen from the adjacent gallery, the blocks appear unadorned. An inspection of the sculpture's other side reveals that each block has, in low relief, a human figure crouching on all fours as if it were a beast of burden.
Guest curator's favorite: "A Visit From the Old Mistress," Winslow Homer's 1876 oil painting in which a plantation mistress and her former slaves awkwardly confront each other in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The artist who got away: Jacob
Lawrence, who is conspicuous by his absence in the array.
"It's disappointing when you want something so badly and can't get it," McInnis says. "All the works by Lawrence that we wanted were committed to other exhibitions."
Surprises: "Well over half the works were known to us from the outset," McInnis says. "The excitement lay in discovering the 25 percent we didn't know.
"I was struck by the extent to which contemporary African-American artists are engaged with both the history of slavery and the art and imagery that grew out of slavery. I was surprised that they were actually looking at art about plantation slavery from the 19th century to make their commentaries on the legacy of slavery."
The Tara connection: The Nostalgia section of "Landscape of Slavery" includes a display case filled with "Gone With the Wind" memorabilia.
"Gone With the Wind" nostalgia is still strong, McInnis says. "Everybody seems to have seen the movie. When I ask my students, almost all the girls and half the boys say they've seen it."
Moving on: "Landscape of Slavery" will close here April 20, then reopen May 9-Aug. 3 at the Gibbes and Aug. 23-Dec. 19 at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Ga.