Written by Adera Causey: Curator of Education, Hunter Museum of American Art

The Hunter Museum of American Art focuses on themes in American history and culture that are reflected through the visual art. Recently, the museum installed a small exhibition on racial stereotypes found in popular culture and fine art.

The exhibition, “Stereotypes and Human Types,” features images and objects that reflect how African Americans were portrayed in a variety of media from antebellum times to the Civil Rights Movement. The title is borrowed from a similarly themed exhibit at the Schaumberg Center for Black Research of the New York Public Library. While the Hunter’s exhibit is different from the original Schaumberg one, the title was adopted as it looks at similar issues in our visual culture.

Americans have long used images as powerful tools to communicate ideas about our diverse nation. Popular culture, music and fine art often represented African Americans in terms of racial stereotypes, frequently reinforcing false belief systems. Countering this, numerous positive images represented the diverse strengths and realities of African Americans.

The exhibition explores popular culture and high culture and the way images of both racial prejudice and ethnic pride have intermingled across media and cultural groups. Popular culture images include racist myths about children and adults, from the buffoonish Jim Crow character to the role of minstrelsy to the Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, represented on collectible objects and commercial brands alike. Racist postcards are exhibited alongside studio portraits of Harlem Renaissance era couples in their Sunday best and as well as books of instruction on accomplished African American men and women who shared their gifts with the nation.

Just as in popular culture, sometimes the “fine arts” of painting and prints reflected stereotypes as well. This can be seen in a frequently reproduced Currier and Ives image of a stereotypical plantation scene. An opposing view can be found in a painting of a Southern schoolhouse working to educate young African American children and in the pride of artists like Robert Duncanson, a very successful African American landscape artist of the 19^th century, whose work was recently acquired by the Hunter.

The exhibition, located on the bottom floor of the Hunter mansion, also includes timelines, resource books and a journal in which visitors can share their thoughts on images of minorities in our culture today. This exhibition provides a variety of resources by which the visitor can see a small sampling of the images created on this subject and can develop greater awareness of how such images are still used today.

In addition, the Hunter is using programs for students and adults to explore these ideas further. One such program works with the National Achievers Society of the Urban League. Through this program, high school students will meet at the Hunter to discuss the issue of African American identity, historically and for teens today, while examining the material in this focus show. Public programs will also look at similar ideas, including the February 21 screening of the film Banished. This evening program, co-sponsored by the Urban League, the Chattanooga African American Museum, the Hunter and WTCI , is open to the public is and features a screening of this documentary that chronicles the lives of the African American evacuees from several American municipalities who were banned during a series of regional acts that banned black residents from a variety of town. The evening will also include a talk by Dr. Clark White of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.