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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We wrap up today by continuing our membership drive series for procrastinators about art exhibitions in local museums that are about to close. There's no time left to dilly-dally if you want to catch, say, the Hopper Show at the Whitney that we talked about yesterday or the one we're going to talk about now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's called Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast closes Sunday.

As you can tell from the title, it's a different kind of show than the Hopper Exhibition. Its centerpiece is a bust of a black woman titled Why Born Enslaved! by the 19th-century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. The exhibition grapples with questions faced by museums like the Met, whose collections include works that are out of keeping with current understandings of history, at current standards of right and wrong, we might say.

To talk about this show and some of the issues it grapples with, we're joined by the co-curators of the exhibition, Wendy S. Walters, a writer and poet and associate professor of writing and director of non-fiction at Columbia University's School of the Arts, and Elyse Nelson, Art historian, and assistant curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We're so glad both of you could join us. Welcome to WNYC.

Wendy S. Walters: Thank you so much.

Elyse Nelson: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Elyse Nelson, the show is fairly small in that it's in one room, and at the center is this bust with more pieces from the Met's collection, and in context, tell us about Why Born Enslaved! and its creator and how it was read at the time.

Elyse Nelson: Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's bust depicts a Black woman whose arms or truncated arms and chest are bound by rope. She looks over her left shoulder. As she does so, twists her torso against the ropes that bind her, and has an expression of defiance, the strength of anger, of contempt. That twisting motion, her expression, as well as the inscription on the bust that reads in French, [foreign language] together contribute to an understanding of the bust in Carpeaux's time and now as carrying an anti-slavery message.

The bust is also clearly in many aspects of its depiction, it's quite eroticized and racialized and was also understood in its time as a representation, not of the woman depicted. There was a living woman, a model who posed for this work, but it was understood not as a portrait of her per se but rather as a racial type. We know this by the title that was given to it at the Salon, which was the annual state-sponsored exhibition where the work was first debuted in 1869.

It was given the title Negress which is a typological term, a term that we would no longer use before because of its assertion of a racial hierarchy. The work functions on many levels, one as a political slogan and also as a work that affirms a strict social hierarchy that was very much in place through its representation of her as a type and as no less an eroticized type.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're curious, we have put a picture of the exhibition with the bust on our segment page, so you can go to wnyc.org and click on Brian Lehrer Show to see this image we're talking about. Wendy S. Walters, I think Elyse might have answered this question. The sculpture I guess is not so offensive that it shouldn't be displayed. Since you're displaying it, also, it was used as a symbol for abolitionists at the time. I understand it was seen in a magazine spread of Janet Jackson's living room. You've decided that it needs to be recast, as the title of the show suggests. What would you add to what Elyse was just saying about the need for that?

Wendy S. Walters: Well, thanks, Brian. There's a few ways in which we can think about the sculptor being recast. For one, Carpeaux produced many reproductions of the sculpture during his time, so it became a really popular piece of work that middle-class people would have in their homes. As Elyse indicated, the work was actually made after slavery was abolished in France, Britain, and the United States, so it's a relic of abolition if it was one. We're not entirely sure what Carpeaux's intention was when he created it, but because there are so many versions of the sculpture that were created during his time, so many reproductions of the work, it actually continues to be reproduced with great intensity, and with great attention to the present day.

The recasting is also referring to the many different ways that people have reimagined and engaged with reproductions of the work. The show actually contains other artists who have engaged with this particular sculpture, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley. It also points to some of the other typological sculptures that were created in advance of Carpeaux, which might have inspired him to create his own work.

Brian Lehrer: Our time is going so quickly, we only have two minutes left in the segment already. As a poet and writer, how did you find yourself a co-curator for a show at the Met?

Wendy S. Walters: Well, I was invited to participate by Elyse after writing a piece, a poem from the perspective of the sculpture. One of the things that's really of concern to me as a writer is the way that representation works. We think this is a really excellent exhibition for a museum to put on because it encourages audiences not just to think about the artwork, but to think about what the work of artwork is. That's why it's been really exciting to see the Met engage in this particular piece of work.

Elyse Nelson: If I could just-

Brian Lehrer: Yes, go ahead.

Elyse Nelson: If I could just jump in and say that for me, the excitement of having Wendy work on this project together was, I witnessed the perspective she brought in writing a poem in response to the work, taking on the perspective of the unknown model or woman who posed for Carpeaux. When working on histories of slavery and black identity and representation in the past, as an art historian, I'm trained to look at the archive, but as we know, there are so many losses and gaps in that archive due to the histories not told, and so it felt really meaningful for this project, in particular, that is about representation to account for the things that we don't know, and Wendy brought a really powerful perspective for thinking about that.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we will have to leave it there. Thank you, Wendy S. Walters and Elyse Nelson, co-curators of the exhibit Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, of course, on 5th Avenue and 81st Street in Manhattan, just through Sunday, closes Sunday. Where does the bust live, Elyse, full-time?

Elyse Nelson: The bust is typically on view in the Petrie Court, the large European Sculpture Court in the Metropolitan, and after the exhibition closes, it will return there.

Brian Lehrer: Again, you can see images and read more about the show and the museum on its website at metmuseum.org. Join us tomorrow to find out about another show that you're about to miss, as this series on exhibitions now running but about to close continues here on The Brian Lehrer Show.

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