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We wish to express our support for Black Lives Matter and those who stand in solidarity across America, in the Netherlands, Belgium, other areas of Europe, and around the world. We align with those who have taken to the streets to protest racism and police brutality, and to call for action in light of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Riah Milton, Dominique Fells, Rayshard Brooks, and countless others.
As art historians, we see and understand the power of photography and video to capture the realities of the world in which we live, and to galvanize action against injustice. As a field, we speak up because we know that the images and histories that we study have been and still can be weaponized in the name of racist agendas. We are obliged to act because the way we examine and frame history affects the manner in which we perceive the present and envision the future. As James Baldwin once wrote, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”
Going forward, we will seek to recognize racial and cultural inequity in our activities and deliberations, and to actively engage with mechanisms to improve our inclusivity as an organization. To that end, HNA’s board will form a diversity and inclusion sub-committee dedicated to addressing these issues and to leading the organization in new directions and toward expanded affiliations. We will be asking for your ideas, your energy, and your assistance in concrete ways over the months to come.
Please feel free to contact members of the Board directly, discuss these issues on our members’ message board, and let your voices and suggestions be heard across our social media platforms.
–on behalf of the HNA Board and editors of JHNA
“Going forward, we will seek to recognize racial and cultural inequity in our activities and deliberations, and to actively engage with mechanisms to improve our inclusivity as an organization. To that end, HNA’s board will form a diversity and inclusion sub-committee dedicated to addressing these issues and to leading the organization in new directions and toward expanded affiliations. We will be asking for your ideas, your energy, and your assistance in concrete ways over the months to come.”
Dear HNA Board and Editors of JHNA, I sincerely welcome this forward looking agenda above. Much good can be done for the common good within a discipline that reaches world wide. Sincerely, Eva J. Allen, Ph.D.
Other organizations, I am thinking particularly of ICMA, have lists of publications, exhibitions, and digital platforms relevant to teaching and researching issues of race and diversity. Perhaps the board could organize such a venture? They also involved black graduate students to speak to the board to encourage more diversity within our field. That worked out well. You might want to chat with Nina Rowe about these varied efforts.
Diane WolfthalIn memory of Professor David C. Driskell (1931- April 1, 2020) who passed away from the Corona virus. David was an artist, art historian, university professor, scholar, curator, and collector; above all, he was a leading authority on African American Art. At the University of Maryland, College Park, The Driskell Center of African American Visual Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora is named after him. David did postgraduate work in art history at the RKD. For the art and legacy of David see: driskellcenter.umd.edu/about/david-c-driskell
Dear Eva,
ICMA is the International Center of Medieval Art. Their statement can be found here:
https://www.medievalart.org/icma-news/2020/6/5/a-statement-of-solidarity-and-actionThank you very much Jun for telling me about the ICMA. The Statement gave some very important internal links to information I can use. I already signed a petition under FightForBreonna.org.
Diane, thanks for your suggestion about a list of resources. It is something we’d already discussed among the board, but are glad to see it would be welcomed. Thanks also for pointing to ICMA’s statement that includes a link to anti-racism resources (and thanks to Jun for providing the link). I was thinking that ours might take the form of a specialized bibliography more specific to our HNA-related fields, but of course we all need to be aware of the larger picture and issues at stake.
Dear Paul, thank you for speaking up. Your suggestion to post anti-racist and art-specific resources is well taken. In the meantime, would someone help me with posting live URLs? In my previous posts on David Driskell (one of our own) and to Breonna Taylor, I left out the https:// which would give people a direct path to the Web sites. I tried to follow the button above, “LINK,” got rejected four times. What do I do wrong? Thank you in advance for your kind help.
Diane, the software is a little strange with the links. You do have to type (or paste) it into the text, then highlight the text, and then click “link” in the menu bar.
https://driskellcenter.umd.edu/
The benefit of this method is that you can have a regular text without showing the URL. So for example, I could write, “Go visit this great website!” By highlighting the word “website” then clicking “link” and then filling in the URL in the popup box, I embedded the link to HNA’s website without spelling it out.
Thank you Paul. I shall try that, although I thought that exactly what I did. Try again. Best wishes, Eva.
I am sorry Paul, your instructions were followed to the letter. They did not work. A private e-mail inquiring bounced back: “<administrator@hnanews.org>550: No such person at this address.”
Okay, Eva, sorry about that. Either I or Marsely Kehoe will contact you shortly by email to troubleshoot the problem.
Hello, I followed Paul’s suggestion to see what can I find more specific to our HNA related fields. I was intrigued by the following title: Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society by Alison Blakely. A short synopsis said this: “[It]examines folklore, art, literature, and religion to gain an understanding of the history and development of racial attitudes and color prejudice during Western expansion and scientific and industrial modernization. Blakely discovers that humanism and liberalism, the hallmarks of Dutch society since medieval times, have not dispelled race bias.” I decided to explore it and ordered the library binding from Amazon, published by Indiana University Press, 1994. It received a five star review. Some of you maybe long familiar with this book but I was not. I thought I share this information anyway.
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