Past Made Present
Introduction
This exhibition explores the long but relatively unacknowledged shadow cast by Dutch industry, culture, and colonialism during the early modern period (ca. 1500–1700). During that time, the global expansion of the Dutch commercial empire provided a newly created merchant class the means to buy and commission vast amounts of art and consumer goods. Museum collections continue to reflect that legacy today—especially in the realm of portraiture. Europe’s immense wealth was generated in part by profits from the transatlantic slave trade, in which the Dutch were major players. This includes trafficking more than 500,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas and the establishment of Nieuw Amsterdam, later known as New York City. Harlem, now an iconic cultural and artistic mecca for the Black diaspora, was once a Dutch colonial outpost.
Some of these works highlight this largely forgotten Dutch influence in the Americas, while others collapse the past and present of Black experience to help us think about the future. Many of the artists featured have regularly refused linear notions of time and national boundaries. In the spirit of the Afro-diasporic intellectual tradition, Past Made Present invites us all to challenge established notions of time, space, and history. Three sections ask us to consider: How do power and wealth affect how we present ourselves? What historical narratives remain unrecognized? How have Black artists critically engaged with the aesthetic practices of Dutch artists from the 1600s, held up as a pinnacle of Western European artistic achievement?
Jane’a Johnson-Farnham
RISD SEI research fellow (2020–2022) and the artistic director at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Exhibition images
