2019-08-01 Essence

(^) C
U L T U R E F
or Denise Murrell, the question
was simple enough: Why are
we ignoring the Black woman
in the painting? Then a finance exec
turned art history student, Murrell
wanted to know who the Black maid
was featured in 1863’s “Olympia,” by
Edouard Manet. Her professor dis-
missed Murrell’s curiosity—which lit
a fire that still burns in her today.
Murrell began focusing
her Ph.D. research on the
unidentified Black women
who appeared in priceless
pieces by such artists as
Théodore Géricault, Paul
Cézanne and Henri Ma-
tisse, as well as the Black
women who were identi-
fied but their stories never
told in “Portrait of Made-
leine,” by Marie-Guille mine
Benoist, and “Aïcha,” by
Félix Vallotton. At first, art
patrons were as uninter-
ested as her professor had
been. “When I sent out
my funding applications,
nobody even responded,”
she recalls. “I didn’t even
get rejection letters—I
didn’t hear anything at all.”
Then, through what
Murrell describes as a
series of “fortuitous cir-
cumstances,” her studies became her
entrée into the hallowed halls of
art history. Speaking from Paris, the
Ford Foundation postdoctoral re-
search scholar remembers the chain
of events: Her dissertation chair was
Anne Higonnet, a feminist art histori-
an who’s own work centered on
women artists who’d been left out of
the canon. Murrell also connected
with another advocate, Ford Founda-
tion president Darren Walker. “Darren
is one of those people changing the
world on such a mega scale,” says
Murrell. “If he had not become presi-
dent of the Ford Foundation, this
thing would have never happened.”
This “thing” was the mounting of
her first exhibit, Posing
Modernity: The Black
Model from Manet and
Matisse to Today, at Co-
lumbia University’s Wal-
lach Art Gallery in Octo-
ber 2018. Last March the
show moved to the
Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Renamed Black Model:
From Géricault to Ma-
tisse, the show grew two
and a half times in size,
with new offerings, in-
cluding a monumental
loan of “Portrait of Mad-
eleine” from the Louvre.
Black Models will be on
display next at the ACTe
Memorial in Pointe-à-
Pitre, Guadelope, from
September 13 through
the end of the year.
Murrell often thinks
about the exhibit’s ac-
quisition of “Portrait of Madeleine”:
“You know, she sat in the Louvre for
220 years because nobody cared to
look. Once there was the curiosity,
you didn’t have to look very far to
find her. She’s just so obvious. I’m
trying to put back these images and
excavate their narratives.”
Thanks to one curator’s inquisitiveness, the
untold stories of Black figures in prominent works of
art have been traversing the globe
THE ARTS
In Plain Sight
I’m trying to
put back these
images and
excavate their
narratives.”
—DENISE MURRELL
BY CORI MURRAY
Curator
Denise Murrell
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ESSENCE.COM I 70 I SEPTEMBER 2019