Reclaiming A Place

Legitimizing The Voices Of The Marginalized Begins With Supporting Their Art

The canvas had been painted with the regal portrait of Thomas Jefferson then draped and folded back to reveal another portrait behind it. A sullen Sally Hemings peers forth, her bare shoulder and leg exposed, irritation and resentment just beneath her placid expression. It’s a powerful piece.

In Behind The Myth Of Benevolence, Titus Kaphar seeks to question how history has remembered Jefferson as a color-blind progressive while rewriting Hemings as the willing recipient of his advances. It is part of a larger exhibition featuring works by Kaphur and Ken Gonzales-Day entitled Unseen: Our Past in a New Light at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Hemings was just 14 to Jefferson’s 44 years at the time when the affair is believed to have begun, an age which hardly suggests she possessed agency over herself, even had she not been the man’s property. Kaphar’s piece aims to amend the record, shifting the focus to reveal an “alternative history that is often hidden beneath the dominant narrative.”

Much like the historical evidence we choose to claim and report, the art we hold in esteem is a commentary on what we value as a society. When the canon is predominantly by and about Christian, white men, both artists and subjects that veer outside that demographic struggle to be legitimized.

In The Atlantic Interview podcast, Chef Mike Solomonov confesses that his now-renowned Philadelphia restaurant, Zahav, sat empty upon opening. Solomonov, the James Beard Foundation’s 2017 Outstanding Chef (as well as 2011’s Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic and the writer of 2016’s Cookbook of the Year), admits that guests had a hard time envisioning Israeli cuisine as more than the street food staples of hummus and falafel. It wasn’t until a Philadelphia Magazine review touted Zahav the best new restaurant in the city that diners were able to reconcile their preconceptions with the fine dining experience being provided.

Native, African, and Asian art are still largely relegated to uncredited, anthropological exhibits in natural history museums while European art is perceived to be the great work of masters. But it is not enough to merely elevate the art of the marginalized…

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