The NGA's so-called America

In 1988, eight years after Ronald Reagan tried to harness white fear and hate by kicking off his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss. and at peak ugliness of the culture wars, former Republican presidential candidate, bigoted culture-warrior and current MSNBC talking head Pat Buchanan asked: "Who speaks for the Euro-Americans, who founded the U.S.A.? Is it not time to take America back?"

Buchanan will be pleased to learn that I've finally found "who speaks for the Euro-Americans:" The National Gallery of Art, whose recently re-installed American galleries are stunning in their presentation of a white, male-centric American art. By my recent count there are 169 works of art in the NGA's 14 recently re-installed American galleries. One hundred and sixty-six (and possibly 167) of them were made by white men. [Image: Edward Savage, The Washington Family.]

First, the NGA's definition of American art, as evidenced by the scope of its galleries: Painting (plus two sculptures, the Shaw Memorial and some related studies) from the colonial period through late Marsden Hartley.

Only one painting by an African-American artist is on view, a Joshua Johnson [at right]. There is one painting of an African-American gentleman by an unknown artist. Both are in the NGA's naive painting gallery. The other 167 (or 168) works in the NGA's 14 American galleries are by white people. There is only one work by a woman in the NGA's American galleries, this Harriet Hosmer. (On the day I conducted my survey, the Hosmer had been temporarily removed.) The other 168 works are by men.

True: Art museums are not history museums. There is no charge that they proportionally represent populations in their galleries. An art museum's mandate is to show the best art it is able to show, within a certain conceit, be that 16thC Italian, 17thC Dutch or American. Even with all those disclaimers: Come on! Two out of 169? At the National Gallery of Art?

The issue isn't the need for some kind of enlightened multiculturalism, the issue is that the NGA's portrayal of 'American art' is a fiction: Art in America has not been made by only white people, nor has it been made only by men. The America envisioned as a past and present construct by the Buchanan-Tancredo crowd -- and as presented in the NGA's galleries -- does not and has never existed.

As a result of either its antiquated definition of American art or something else, the NGA excludes an astonishing range of non-white, non-male artists. Ann (sometimes Anne) Hall, Sarah and Eliza Goodridge were among the foremost American miniaturists of their day. Robert S. Duncanson was one of the foremost painters of the then-West. [Image: Duncanson, Blue Hole, Little Miami River, Cincinnati Art Museum.] Aaron Douglas, whose practice ranged from canvas to murals to graphic work and to whom contemporary artists such as Kara Walker are deeply indebted, is absent. What about Lily Martin Spencer, whose American genre paintings are among the best of her generation? Or the delightful seascapes of Mary Blood Mellen or Michele Felice Corne? Tellingly, only Spencer is even partially represented in the NGA's collection (an 1855 painting is a promised and partial gift).

Furthermore, the NGA's approach to American art -- paintings-on-canvas-or-board reign -- excludes media in which non-northeastern-white men excelled. That excludes Georgian Harriet Powers, a one-time slave is arguably the greatest American quilter. And what about santos, a distinctly New Mexican form of religious icon? Or Mary Anne Willson or Eunice Pinney's delightful works on paper. (The NGA owns four Willsons and four Pinneys. None are on view.) Absent are the sculptures of Anne Whitney, one of which is nearby, in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall collection. 

It is not enough to say that, 'Well, the NGA collection just doesn't happen to own artists who aren't white men. Can't blame them for not showing what they don't own." That in itself is an indictment. The NGA administration, its trustees and curators -- including the current leadership -- has had both the time and the budget to address the collection's deficiencies. It's time for that to be an institutional priority.