by: Margaret Burroughs
FAITH LAPIDUS: The National Museum of African American History and Culture is presenting the exhibit. It is called “The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey – Where Art and History Intersect.”
It is being shown at the NMAAHC gallery at the National Museum of American History on the National Mall. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is to begin building its own center next year.
Bernard and Shirley Kinsey began collecting African American art and historical objects in the nineteen seventies. Bernard Kinsey says it started with an old document sent to him by a friend.
BERNARD KINSEY: “It was a bill of sale from William Johnson, eighteen thirty-two, for five hundred dollars. And when I opened that Fed-Ex up and held this document in my hand it was like I was holding this brother in my hand. And I said I want to know everything about him, and how he lived and this period. And that just started this deep and wide quest.”
The bill of sale is in a part of the show called “Stories of Slavery and Freedom.” The bill of sale, like many objects in this area, is extremely unsettling. The physical fact deepens the knowledge that people were once considered property.
There is a second bill of sale nearby. This time the purchaser is Henry Butler in eighteen thirty-nine. The bill shows a payment of one hundred dollars to Anne Graham of Washington, D.C. for the freedom of Henry Butler’s wife and four children. The bill states: “Signed, sealed and delivered.”
There are also a pair of shackles from around eighteen fifty. This device was placed around the ankles to restrain captives on the way from Africa to the Americas. The exhibit display explains that the shackles are so small they may have been for a child.
As visitors move through the show, they move forward in time. Covers of Harpers Weekly magazine give an idea of the involvement of black men in the Union Army. One cover shows the Twentieth Colored Infantry of Eighteen Sixty-Four receiving a silk banner in New York City. The banner was made by their mothers, wives and sisters. A proud African American crowd watches the ceremony.
In the “Freedom Struggles” area, there are signs of racial separation. These include a drinking fountain sign with arrows pointing one way for “whites” and another for “colored.”
Toward the end of the exhibit visitors reach “Remembering the Faces of a People.” This joyous section includes oil paintings, woodcuts, drawings, sculpture, photographs, fabric art and more. It shows the many ways African American artists see themselves and their community.
And it was the best part of the Kinsey Collection for visitor Aaron Crenshaw, of Woodbridge, Virginia.
AARON CRENSHAW: “The touching artwork. I never knew about, never knew existed. Been in the military so I’ve seen, like, the military side. But the art factor. It’s just an eye opener, if you’ve never seen it before.”
The Kinsey Collection will be on view until through May first. For a link to the exhibit visit our website at voaspecialenglish.com.