Brown vs. Board of Education Art Exhibit

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Recommended: My experience on visiting a museum

One of Art’s Messages

When I first walked into the Krannert Art Museum, I had no idea where to begin seeing that this was my first visit to the museum. So I asked a man who worked there to point me in the general direction of the exhibit known as “Eight Artists Address Brown v. Board of Education.” The man gave me directions, and showed me into the section for the exhibit. I walked into two small rooms, which I thought was a little small for the work of eight artists. Despite the size, I had no idea where to start. So I took a quick look around the exhibit, which was empty except for the security guard who, upon my arrival, jumped up from his seat. Throughout my time at the museum, this guard was constantly checking me, like a hawk waiting for its prey to make a move before coming in for the kill, as if I were going to do anything other than look at the exhibits. His evil gaze was a little unnerving, however, I persisted in my work.

In order to decide where to start, I spun around in a circle, coming to a stop at Pamel Vander Zwan’s and Carrie Mae Weems’ work on Plessy v. Ferguson. This was a series of five photographs in black and white featuring Zwan and Weems, one black and the other white, fighting over a chair in the middle of a checkered black and white room. It did not matter which picture started the series, because the two on the ends were the same picture. If going in a linear order, depending on where you started, the second and fourth pictures showed the two women struggling for the chair with the white women having the upper-hand, and the black women trying to take the chair away. Which ever direction you took, the pictures always ended the same way, with each women back where they started.

It was at this point that I found a little book that describes each exhibit, which helped me to understand the pictures. Not knowing the background behind Plessy v. Ferguson, the struggle for the seat didn’t make much sense. The history is written saying that Homer Plessy was a black man who sat in the “white man only” car of a train, quite a rebellious feat for his time.

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