On the Saturday, January 23 edition of The Local Take we speak with Andrea Barnwell-Brownley, director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art about Black Chronicles II. This photography exhibit will open on January 29 and run through May 14.
The photographs taken in Victorian Britain in the early 1800's feature mostly never before seen images of both ordinary and prominent citizens of African descent. Andrea shares that some photos depict members of The African Choir, a group that toured Europe in 1891 and 1893.
We also discuss the advent of photography in 1839, and the surprising portraits that are included. Most often you do not find pictures or portraits that include a African presence in Victorian Britain. Andrea explains how Autograph ABP, a London based arts agency led by Renee Mussai and Mark Sealy, curated and organized this exhibit by searching the national archives and private collections in collaboration with the Hulton Archive, a division of Getty Images. In the end, they discovered hundreds of photographs proving Africans were very much part of the Victorian Era.
I ask Andrea how the exhibit differs from the many collections that can now be found online. She shows me just one of the portraits on card stock and immediately you realize that this is something more than a digital representation. The portraits have been printed in large formats on the best paper which brings the pictures to life.
We are all invited to join Curator Renee Mussai on January 29, 6:30 p.m. at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art for an illustrated lecture about Black Chronicles II. This is the Southeast debut before the exhibition returns to London on May 14, 2016.
Click the link for more information on Black Chronicles II.
Click the link for more information on Autograph ABP.
Click the link for more information on Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts.