Project

In Open Contempt: Engaging Expressions of White Supremacy in Art and Public Space

Program

Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships

Department

English

Abstract

In 2017, four monuments honoring white supremacists were razed in New Orleans. Since then, racist imagery has been reimagined the world over. This project meditates on these developments and the contemporary Black experience through an engagement with art, museums, and public space. The result is a memoir-in-essays that centers on New Orleans as the epicenter of American slavery, and in the space of reflection, transports the reader to other sites throughout North America, Europe, and the Caribbean. The Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, Michelangelo’s David in Florence, and La Museo del Revolucion in Cuba are just a few of the sites explored. Reckoning with white supremacy as illustrated in monuments, museums, and art is the central theme. By engaging with razed monuments, those that still stand, and those that have yet to be erected, this projects considers the possibilities of life unbound by the burdens of race.