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The Black Museum of Words: Ekphrasis and Curation in William J. Wilson's "Afric-American Picture Gallery".

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Title: The Black Museum of Words: Ekphrasis and Curation in William J. Wilson's "Afric-American Picture Gallery".
Authors: Thomson, Richard (AUTHOR)
Source: African American Review. Fall/Winter2024, Vol. 57 Issue 3/4, p257-279. 23p.
Subject Terms: African American authors, African American literature, Ekphrasis, Museum curators
Reviews & Products: Afric-American Picture Gallery (Short story)
People: Wilson, William J.
Abstract: This article explores the formal and generic innovations of William J. Wilson's serialized short story, "Afric-American Picture Gallery," which was published in the Anglo-African Magazine in seven installments between February 1859 and October 1859. Beginning with a creative critical pastiche of Wilson's style, I locate Wilson within a tradition of Black ekphrastic writers like Melvin Tolson and Margaret Danner who contribute to a space I name the "Black Museum of Words," one that shares the revisionist logic of work by contemporary Black installation artists like Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker. Contributing to the recent recovery of Wilson's work by Ivy G. Wilson, Derrick Spires, Carla Peterson, Teresa Goddu, Britt Rusert, and others, I parse the unexamined distinction between the aims of Ethiop and the gallery's unnamed curator, their instrumentalization of the gallery as a medium for producing an image of an "Afric-American" nation that resembles but is not isomorphic with the United States. The spatially and temporally dislocated nation that becomes visible through the generative interference of their perspectives is one that is actively contested and that aspires not the illusory seamlessness of the panorama, but to the dynamic juxtapositions of the picture gallery and its discontinuous frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of African American Review is the property of Johns Hopkins University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: This article explores the formal and generic innovations of William J. Wilson's serialized short story, "Afric-American Picture Gallery," which was published in the Anglo-African Magazine in seven installments between February 1859 and October 1859. Beginning with a creative critical pastiche of Wilson's style, I locate Wilson within a tradition of Black ekphrastic writers like Melvin Tolson and Margaret Danner who contribute to a space I name the "Black Museum of Words," one that shares the revisionist logic of work by contemporary Black installation artists like Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker. Contributing to the recent recovery of Wilson's work by Ivy G. Wilson, Derrick Spires, Carla Peterson, Teresa Goddu, Britt Rusert, and others, I parse the unexamined distinction between the aims of Ethiop and the gallery's unnamed curator, their instrumentalization of the gallery as a medium for producing an image of an "Afric-American" nation that resembles but is not isomorphic with the United States. The spatially and temporally dislocated nation that becomes visible through the generative interference of their perspectives is one that is actively contested and that aspires not the illusory seamlessness of the panorama, but to the dynamic juxtapositions of the picture gallery and its discontinuous frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of African American Review is the property of Johns Hopkins University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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        Value: 10.1353/afa.2024.a959080
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      – Code: eng
        Text: English
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      – SubjectFull: Ekphrasis
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      – SubjectFull: Museum curators
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      – SubjectFull: Afric-American Picture Gallery (Short story)
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      – SubjectFull: Wilson, William J.
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              M: 09
              Text: Fall/Winter2024
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