National Gallery Of Art | Audio

November 2013 - Panelists include Kerry James Marshall, artist; James Meyer, associate curator of modern art, National Gallery of Art; Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Northwestern University; Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor, English department, Vanderbilt University; Dan S. Wang, artist and writer. The central theme of the exhibition In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall, on view through December 8, 2013, at the National Gallery of Art, is the Middle Passage—the violent journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas during the colonial and antebellum periods—and its traumatic impact in the lives and memories of African Americans in particular. Marshall's show begins with images of human beings and the open sea, of sailboats and an amusement-park water ride, evocative of the Middle Passage. Yet the exhibition also includes scenes of backyard pools, suburban lawns, and white picket fences, of children riding b