Obscured Identities:

Data and Representation in Museum Catalogs

Who determines identity?

Introduction

Let’s take a look at these four items. What do they have in common? What are their differences?

These four objects are held at the Tufts University Art Gallery Collection in Medford, MA. Connected to these objects are 72 identifiers used by the gallery to catalog and keep track of these items, such as creator name, region of birth, ethnicity, and donor name. Not every object has all its identifiers complete. The four objects above each have about 20 identifiers recorded. Regardless of this limited information, each tells a unique story: its origin as a work of art, its place of creation, and its categorization within TUAG’s collections management system, PastPerfect.

As we explore each object, let’s begin to consider what is missing in the way its identity has been categorized. Does this limit our understanding of this object on its own, and within the collection? If so, does this limited view of these objects constrict our accessibility to them? As individuals, as a Tufts community, and beyond? Welcome to this exhibition.

Significant Geographic Locations

    • Tufts University Art Gallery
    • St Andrew, Jamaica
    • Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
    • Harlem, New York City, USA
    • Crozier Arts Center - Storage
    • Ghana
    • Aidekman Arts Center - Storage
    • First Mesa, Arizona, USA
    • Tufts University Anthropology Department
    • Crozier Fine Arts - Storage
    • Santiago, Chile
    • Palacio de la Moneda, Santiago, Chile
    • New York City, New York, USA
    • Crozier Fine Arts - Storage


What defines a "home?"

Nari Ward's Homeland Sweet Homeland

Here we see an artwork depicting an eagle-flanked seal and a list of American constitutional rights. 

Let’s give it a closer look.

This is printed onto linen, and the text is embroidered.

Pause for a moment and look at the eagle. What does it make you think of?

What about its gaze? What might the artist be trying to make us feel? 

You might have been reminded of the Great Seal of the United States. Below is an early version of the Seal from the 18th century. What differences do you notice between the two works?

Charles Thomson's design for the Great Seal of the United States, 1782; Reports of Committees of Congress; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360;  National Archives  

One major difference is the artwork on the left features a lot more text than the seal. This is important. Let’s take a closer look at the text.

Notice to Police Officers and Prosecutors. I do not wish to answer any questions without speaking to an attorney. I wish to speak to my attorney now. If you need my consent for any search or for any other procedure, I will not give it until I have spoken to my attorney. I will not waive any of my constitutional rights.

Have you heard this before? What do you think it means?

The embroidered words state the Miranda Rights but from the first-person perspective rather than the second. Listen to the Miranda Rights here:

Miranda Rights or Warning - Hear the Text

Why do you think the artist chose to use the first person?

Here’s what one of our classmates thought:

Homeland Sweet Homeland makes me feel tense, almost uneasy. There is a lot of weight in the words embroidered here and that weight has become all too familiar for many Americans. I have never had to utter these words in my life nor can I ever relate to the individuals and families who have had to say it before, but I feel disappointment when I look at this piece and I think my disappointment makes me feel even more sad in a way.” - Jane

The title Homeland Sweet Homeland calls attention to the idea of home. What does this tell you about the artist’s feelings about his home?

Are “nationality” and “home” the same? Are they different? Does your notion of home feel connected to larger aspects of your identity? Who might the artist be? And what might they be trying to say?

Here’s what the Gallery’s database says about the artist …

Name: Nari Ward Gender: Man Region: Latin America/Caribbean Race: Black Country: Jamaica Culture: Jamaican-American

Here’s what the artist has said about himself …

Artist Interview: Nari Ward

Nari Ward in his studio, 2019. Photo: James Emmerman. Courtesy of James Emmerman Studio.  

Having relocated to New Jersey, and later to Harlem, New York, from St. Andrew, Jamaica at the age of 12, Nari Ward's life experience and artistic practice tell us a story that doesn't fit into the binary categorizations commonly used to manage museum collections.

Given the clear frustrations with the American justice system that Ward articulates in this piece, isn’t it a bit odd the object’s data entry classifies Ward’s “country” as solely Jamaica? Yes, he was born in Jamaica, and this would definitely shape his experience.

    • Tufts University Art Gallery
    • Crozier Arts Center - Storage
    • St Andrew, Jamaica
    • Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
    • Harlem, New York City, New York, USA

Significant geographic locations for Homeland Sweet Homeland.

However, this piece relies on the image of the eagle as an American symbol of identity and citizenship. 

At the bottom, Ward decorates the seal with megaphones used in both protests against police, and by law enforcement officers themselves.

These are American tropes and articulate Ward’s experiences as an American.

Homeland Sweet Homeland expresses the paradox many people of color and immigrants suffer in America: the nation that promises liberty to all, incarcerates and persecutes them disproportionately.

Clearly playing on the maxim “Home Sweet Home,” Homeland Sweet Homeland references the Department of Homeland Security, implying added connections to American immigration policies, and Ward’s experience as an immigrant too.

Ward chose to embroider the rights onto a tea towel, further calling into question the ideas of home, playing on themes of domesticity and domestic security.

Ward’s classification as simply Jamaican undermines his cross-national experience, and even undermines our reading of this piece.

By understanding the complexities of Ward’s identity, we can better ponder how home is or isn’t tied to nationality, in Ward’s case and in our own.

“It was this really special place – and maybe created this hyper-idealised expectation for what Harlem was. I got dropped into that and fell in love with that mythology and in some ways wanted to re-immerse myself in it. Then there is this image of Harlem as a destination for immigrants from the south, but also from the Caribbean. New York is called the Big Apple, Harlem is called the Big Mango. A lot of people don’t know that.” - Nari Ward on his home

Where is home for you? Can it be more than one place?


What defines "artwork?"

Artist once known, Untitled (Best in Hair Cut)

“Best in Hair Cut” is a 20th century painting from Ghana. It is a commercial sign that would have hung outside a barber shop.

As a class, we viewed this object together at the Tufts University Art Gallery to learn more about how we, as a Tufts community, engage with this piece.

Any department at Tufts can request to show art in its hallways or offices for view by the community. This piece is highly requested by departments and has almost always been on display since its purchase in 1997.

Why is it so regularly requested?

Departments want to show diversity.

This is an easy-to-hang-on-the-wall object that shows Black people.

It is also colorful and bright.

It does not depict Black culture in a traumatic way.

“I was struck at how familiar “Best in Haircut” feels. As if I was walking through the streets of any small town on the Pacific coast of Colombia, where popular barber shops are also found serendipitously.” -Maria

It’s one of few pieces in the permanent collection like this. 

The data show it’s the only work by a named Black African-born artist (and the only work by a Black African-born artist that isn’t an antiquity).

This is problematic, despite its good intentions. It is removed from its context and is being used for, and by, a predominantly white university as a token of diversity, rather than telling a richer story.

So what context are we missing?

The artist is listed as Justice Ofoni, but a large part of Justice’s last name is missing from the piece.

This isn’t the only thing we’re missing about “Best in Hair Cut.”

The TUAG database says that Justice’s work is culturally African; yet we can at least confirm that the work is specifically Ghanaian. So why reduce this culture to a broad continental label?

    • Tufts University Art Gallery
    • Ghana
    • Aidekman Arts Center - Storage

Significant geographic locations for Best in Hair Cut.

Knowing that “Best in Hair Cut” is from Ghana, can we narrow down a more specific culture that the piece represents?

It’s difficult.

There are 5 major cultural groups in Ghana, which can be further broken into over 100 distinct groups.

 Map of Ghana showing the five major ethnic groups. This figure was uploaded by Stephen Nkansah Morgan, and retrieved from his thesis for the Doctor of Philosophy titled “ The Place of African Animal Ethics Within the Welfarist and Rightist Debate: An Interrogation of Akan Ontological and Ethical Beliefs Towards Animals and Environment ,” Jan. 2020. Accessed April 24, 2022.  

Despite the existence of these major cultural groups in the country, Western colonization has redefined cultural borders in Ghana. This has contributed to cultural erasure and disregard for pre-existing cultural borders. Colonization has reshaped borders in Ghana …

 Geopolitical map of Ghana. Minisère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, direction des Archives (pôle géographique) Mai 2019.  

… so how has colonization also affected Justice’s work?

Ghana. Census Office, and Survey Of Ghana. Predominant tribe in the area: Ghana. [Accra: Survey Division, ?, 1966] Map.  https://www.loc.gov/item/88692692/ 

One example is in its title. The title “Best in Hair Cut” is written in English, the lingua franca of Ghana since 16th-century colonial rule. Lingua franca refers to a language used “to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect.” Which means that in conversations not relating to trade, one of the 70 tribal groups’ languages are used. What did the barber shop want to express or communicate by writing in English?

Barber shops have always been a place for community. To bring people together.

 Natty Bong stands in front of his barbershop lined with wooden signs. Courtesy of Ernie Wolfe. Retrieved from AtlasObscura.com/articles/ghana-artists-paintings-wooden-signs.  

They are places for people to gather and share stories.

They are spaces that offer experiences, growth, and connections.

They are also places to build relationships and spend time together.

 From The New York Times: West Africa, as Seen From Its Barbershops. Jun. 19, 2013. Andrew Esiebo, who documents barbershops in West Africa, is among an emerging generation of African photographers telling stories rooted in daily life but often overlooked. Photo: Andrew Esiebo. lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/documenting-west-africa-one-barbershop-at-a-time/  

A Visit to the Best Barbershop in Ghana

Yet, when we look at where Ofoni’s work has been displayed on campus, much of that community aspect is lost.

Locations of Display on Tufts University Campus (1997-2022)

    • Aidekman Arts Center, 1997
    • Dowling Hall, 2001-2005
    • Aidekman Arts Center, 2007-2011
    • Fine Arts House, 2016-2017
    • Granoff Music Building, 2018
    • Aidekman Arts Center, 2018-2019
    • Granoff Music Building, 2019-2020

The piece is isolated and disconnected from its home; the work is reduced to its color, its characters and with no context, the stories we make about it are simplified. Tufts’s narrative of Ofoni’s piece shifted its meaning from a marker of community-centered places of growth and connection, to an object for constant white consumption.

This context and story, left out from the data, provides a much richer experience for the object. Removed from context by supposedly objective data, it becomes susceptible to the colonizing uses of the Western culture we’re in.

How do you define your identity? How has your own culture shaped that identity?


Who defines "artist?"

Muriel Nevaytewa's Hopi Pot

“Hopis live surrounded by clay and its sweetness, which is most perceptible when the air in their desert environment contains moisture.” - Lea McChesney, "Hopi Women Shaping the World"

In a landscape defined by infinite tonal variations of red, ochre, and terracotas, a time-honored tradition of creating pottery lives on the Hopi reservation in the northeastern corner of Arizona.

 Landscape view of Northern Arizona. Photo: Cynthia Robinson. Courtesy of the photographer.  

On the reservation there are three mesas, each known for a specific craft. The Third Mesa in particular is known for pottery.

 Map of the Hopi Land, Arizona, showing the Four Corners of Hopi Land. Courtesy of  The Hopi Education Endowment Fund  (HEEF). 

    • Tufts University Art Gallery
    • First Mesa, Arizona, USA
    • Tufts University Anthropology Department
    • Crozier Fine Arts - Storage

Significant geographic locations for the Hopi Pot.

See this tiny piece of pottery? It was acquired on the First Mesa, and is attributed to Muriel Nevaytewa.

Standing at only three inches tall, the Hopi Pot can easily fit in the palm of a hand. Despite its small size, the entire form is covered with detailed patterns.

 Muriel Nevaytewa’s Hopi Pot, Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG), Medford, Massachusetts. Photo: Claire E. Pellegrini. Courtesy of the photographer. 

When an object is added to a museum, certain pieces of information are collected and recorded in its database. From a cataloging perspective, the entry for the Hopi Pot is thorough, every aspect of the piece is recorded. However, this data leave out an important element of Hopi pottery.

In the Hopi culture, pottery making is a social activity and process. Creating pots is not as much about the finished product, but about the communal experience of making the piece. Although this process is not valued in the traditional museum style of information collecting, it would have been extremely important to the artist. 

Here is what one of our classmates thought:

“There is something yet to be said about how we relate to objects produced from other epistemologies. We have to stop seeing Native/Indigenous objects as study cases and instead offer spaces to interact with them relationally.” - María

Museum-cataloging processes value having a specific, named creator. In the case of the Hopi Pot, the name Muriel Nevaytewa is written on the bottom of the pot, which seemingly connects the pot to the identity of a specific person.

However, this assumption is challenged when we consider that the pot was donated to TUAG in 1997 by a Tufts Anthropology professor. Knowing this makes us question if Muriel really signed the pot, or if the data were added as a way to catalog the object.

Knowing her name only from this signature confuses our understanding of Muriel’s story, leaving us with more questions than answers.

Carl Moon, Hopi Woman Making Pottery,  ca. 1937-1943, oil on canvas,  Smithsonian American Art Museum , Gift of Mrs. Florence O.R. Lang, 1985.66.383,332.  

What information would be valuable to craft a story that centers Muriel, her life, and culture? 

Although we do not know much about Muriel, we can make some inferences about the Hopi Pot based on its physicality and historical context.

Hopi pots for sale in a Scottsdale, Arizona, shop. Established in 1969-70, the Old Territorial Shop was one of the first devoted to American Indian art to open in Scottsdale. The town is now a major locale for the sale of American Indian art. Photo: Christopher Burnett. Expedition Magazine 36.1 (1994).  

For example, the pot’s dimensions suggest that it might have been a souvenir meant for tourists.

Did Muriel Nevaytewa sell her creations as souvenirs? Is the Hopi Pot an example of a pot produced for tourists?

If the pot is indeed tourist art, maybe that is why the artist’s name, the date 1997, and the word “Hopi” are present at the base of the object, as a way to catalog a purchase.

Examples like the Hopi Pot highlight the gap between biographical information and a person’s identity and story.

Here’s what one of our classmates thought:

“Although we know so little about Muriel, I feel connected to her through the medium of clay. I know her skin would have become dry after working with clay as mine has been. I know the inside of her nose would have become orange as she breathed in the dust of drying clay, just as mine did. It feels wrong to know these intimate details of her life without knowing the rest of her story.” - Claire

We need both the object and the context for any meaningful awareness of artmakers’ experiences. The current data do not allow for deeper context which is a loss for the artist, the culture represented, and those learning from the object.


Who gets to have a voice?

Jorge Tacla's Identidad Oculta 117

Hello, my name is Katelyn and I would like to personally introduce you to this next object and the artist that created it, Jorge Tacla. Tacla is a new favorite of mine and my intention here is to show you why I think his work so eloquently sums up the themes of this class project. This next exploration will touch on themes of trauma, but I will leave you in safe hands with Tacla.

When this painting first went up on the class projector, I knew exactly what it was. I’ve experienced trauma both personally and collectively, and I thought I instinctively understood Tacla’s work here. The more I learn about Identidad Oculta 117, and Tacla’s work in the series Hidden Identities in which it was created, the more I believe that to be true.

It’s difficult to talk about these things because trauma is inherently disorienting and our memories and brains do funny things with it. This is something that I think most people can understand now, to an extent, having lived through the global trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve had many conversations with folks about how time seems to move differently these days, and our minds sort of move in and out of focus – even our memories warp.

 Palacio de La Moneda – Explosion  

This can be how trauma behaves, especially before it is named and examined. If we, individually and collectively, don’t do the work to look at our trauma, it continues to pop up in disruptive ways. On the other hand, when you consider trauma –and look at how it swirls and fractures the life around us in wild ways – the pathway to better and safer grows less scary and intimidating. Going to the title of this piece, which in English translates to Hidden Identity 117, I think about how leaving this swirling mess in the back of your mind obfuscates your identity. It prevents you from fully realizing the big picture. A lot of Tacla’s work is about both community and systemic trauma.

 Palacio de La Moneda - Populated 

Jorge Tacla

Jorge Tacla was born in Santiago, Chile to a family of immigrants, but has lived between there and New York City since the 1980s. Tacla expresses a sense of multiculturalism when speaking about his own identity. Tacla found a similar sense of multiculturalism so welcoming, homey, and creatively productive when he arrived in NYC in the 80s.

    • Tufts University Art Gallery
    • Santiago, Chile
    • Palacio de la Moneda, Santiago, Chile
    • New York City, New York, USA

Significant geographic locations for Identidad Oculta 117.

Tacla was in Santiago during the La Moneda presidential palace bombing, and New York City when hijacked airplanes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The tragic events that devastated his home cities both occurred on September 11th, in 1973 and 2001 respectively. Both attacks proved intensively traumatic on a national level in their countries. Further, both were the result of, and had lasting impact on, international politics and power dynamics.

Tacla has returned to both attack sites in his work repeatedly. With Identidad Oculta 117, he has painted a blurring view of the traumatic repercussions of La Moneda presidential palace’s bombing in dark oil and cold wax.

Tacla’s work shows how intimately he understands these cycles of violence. Despite his familiarity with these moments, the images in his work remain obscured. In Identidad Oculta 117, and in many others in this series, Tacla looks at these events so closely I feel like I might suffocate. I get it. Tacla is quite literally showing this swirling hazy scene of La Moneda, the view of it and its memory; the very identity of this trauma begins to shift and distort the longer you look at it.

He points out that there is a danger for the cycle to repeat itself because of the systems that, having been built by humans, perpetuate violence through the inherent biases that exist in our language.

A Chilean artist reveals Hidden Identities FINAL

“Sometimes the aggressor doesn’t have any consciousness of his aggressiveness and comes to the victim without any knowledge of the damage that has been created..” - Jorge Tacla

In the museum world – and the world at large – we repeat the cycle when we fail to look at our systems of data, categorization, and naming. The things that we note down in spreadsheets fail to adequately span our lived realities. These oversimplifications are not neutral because they create meaning and space inside computing systems, catalogs and labels on museum walls – and our own thinking.

Tufts University Art Galleries is actively working on their systems of categorization now. They have reached out to living artists to ask them to fill out a form for self identification. What’s interesting to note is that there are terms on this form that are indicative of recent language shifts. For example, Tacla noted on his form a preference for the term “Latine,” a gender neutral term that has developed as recently as 2020 by Spanish speakers grappling with the intersecting complexities of power dynamics in that language.

What we’ve looked at so far in this virtual exhibit is about the ways that binary-thinking based data collection re-enacts violence and literally obscures identity. If we don’t look at and name the issues with the data, it continues to systemically disrupt identity. The issues within the data are very human issues that have been created by humans. The data are not neutral. It is important to remember this, in the museum world and more broadly as increasingly data-reliant professionals.

Thinking back to Homeland Sweet Homeland, Best in Hair, and Hopi Pot, a noticeable pattern emerged from the data showing how it served to decontextualize aspects of these pieces that are vital to the stories they can tell, while robbing the artist’s voice of nuance and meaning.

data+time=obscured stories

It bothered me how much this system disengages the artist of their voice, especially where those voices are readily accessible elsewhere. We are lucky that for Tacla, an artist who is currently living and working, we have the opportunity to reach out to him and allow him to give voice to his work himself.

This is something we cannot currently do for the creators of Hopi Pot or Best in Hair Cut. I would like to turn our platform now over to Jorge Tacla himself to see what he has to say about his work and the nature of systemic violence:

“From that moment, my work was created in the negative because there was no material or way of locating the places, no reference point.These are interior parts where there are no horizons, no ups and downs. A space where the dimensions don’t correspond to any way of orienting ourselves …” (translated from Spanish)

“It gives the painting kind of a movement all of the time because it never dries … it's like the mind of the body.”

“Words deal in a very different way than images and it's kinda like the structure of the brain.”

Jorge Tacla: Sign of Abandonment

“I do think that art has the ability and responsibility to affect political and/or social change. For me art has always been a form of denunciation, and my work deals deeply with the insanity of societies ...

... It portrays physical and psychological aggressions that have been controlled and hidden by institutionalized power, using a visual language that invites contemplation. I want to amplify the voices of the victims of injustice and inequity ...

... In order to do so, I work with media images and theoretical analysis of conflicts around the world. I always look for the missing information, the restricted data, and negotiations of power ...

... I create images that reveal what is concealed, using a metaphorical language to illuminate the one reality that is publicly shown, and the other reality that is hidden. My main concern is revealing human responses to injustice.”

- Jorge Tacla


Where do we go from here?

We have become divided by design. Data and data collection are not neutral, and can even be actively harmful.

In an attempt to better grasp the objects in this collection, our system of cataloging has reduced the objects to categories like medium, creator culture, title and subject gender. We can keep adding rows to capture multiple categories, but that becomes an awkward solution, bounding off and separating each category instead of allowing them to be intersecting. Which doesn’t allow for a nuanced understanding of these objects. The full lived experience of a human cannot be contained in a cell, or as Katelyn put it, “humans do not belong in cells.” While our lived experiences are often intersectional and even contradictory, spreadsheet cells can be populated only by either “this term” or “that term” (or that, or that, etc.). This is binary thinking, a pillar of White Supremacy Culture ( Tema Okun , 2021). This isn’t serving us as a student body, as practitioners of the arts, and the community within and surrounding the university.

We hope in our interpretation of these pieces you have been able to see beyond the data. We hope you take from these examples an ability to re-examine different systems in your own spaces and question whose story/perspective you are being told. Other systems of logic exist that allow for multiplicity and inconsistency – for things to be both/and – such as schools of paraconsistent logic in Brazil or Janist Seven-Valued logic from Ancient India.

This is a messy practice. These messes are human, the more we grapple with these messes the more familiar and understandable to us they become because we all make them. Data systems will always struggle to represent the world they describe, but we can find more accurate and less oppressive ways to do it. Ways that allow for multiple voices to be centered and shared, rather than reinforcing marginalizations. We are all a work in progress. Tufts University Art Gallery is working on changing the ways in which this data are used as well as what data are collected. But this is also the work for all of us, to add our stories back into the objects that surround us. To imagine better. Just remember as much as we made this system of categorization we can recreate it, re-imagine it. That it can serve us better, and serve more people. It is not too late. Do you dare imagine where we can go from here?


About Us

Proseminar for Interpretation, Tufts University

This was the semester-long project for a Spring 2022 graduate seminar in the Tufts University Museum Education program. The seed for this project was planted in February of 2022, when we attended the “ Art Datathon ” conference put on by Tufts’ Data Intensive Studies Center and the Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG). During the Datathon, we analyzed TUAG’s’ digitized catalog of their collection, presented to us as a dataset on a spreadsheet. The objects in the collection were listed and categorized based on various criteria such as artist name, region, and race. Looking at how artists of different identities are represented within the dataset, we observed how data can be oversimplified, misleading, and even biased against people of diverse backgrounds. The four pieces explored in this project serve as case studies that exhibit how museum catalogs can sometimes misrepresent the objects’ stories. Guided by the praxis of “ Critical Cataloging ,” for this virtual exhibition, we interpreted the pieces from a perspective that celebrated the artists’ holistic identities, not just their catalog entries. We hope you enjoyed!

Content Development: Ally Cirelli, Claire Pellegrini, Elizabeth Elliott, E. Jane Lapasaran, Gaby Perez-Dietz, Katelyn Leaird, Kylie Burnham, Maria Mancera Perez, Michaela Antunes Blanc

Site Design: Claire Pellegrini

Course Professor: Cynthia Robinson


Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank the Tufts University Art Galleries’ staff, specifically Dina, Laura and Liz, for their continued help and support with this endeavor. We are also grateful to the Art Datathon’s organizers, featured speakers, and participants.

The title of this exhibition, "Obscured Identities," was inspired by the title of Jorge Tacla's series "Hidden Identities."


References

Bruce, Symphony. “Critical Cataloging and Classification,” American University. https://subjectguides.library.american.edu/c.php?g=1025915&p=7749829 Bristol, Douglas. “From Outposts to Enclaves: A Social History of Black Barbers from 1750 to 1915.” Enterprise and Society 5, no. 4 (2015): 594 - 606. Cristin Tirney. “Jorge Tacla: Sign of Abandonment.” Accessed March 3, 2022. https://www.cristintierney.com/exhibitions/23-jorge-tacla-sign-of-abandonment/video/ Deng, Francis. “Ethnicity: An African Predicament.” Brookings, June 1, 1997. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ethnicity-an-african-predicament/ Dongoske, Kurt E., Michael Yeatts, Roger Anyon, and T.J. Ferguson. “Archaeological Cultures and Cultural Affiliation: Hopi and Zuni Perspectives in the American Southwest.” American Antiquity 62, no. 4 (1997): 600 - 608. Dooling, Shannon. “Nari Ward Exhibit At Boston’s ICA Captures Tension Of Immigrant Experiences.” wbur, June 23, 2017. https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/06/23/nari-ward-ica-immigration Glancy, Jonathan. “Merde d'artiste: not exactly what it says on the tin,” The Guardian, June 13, 2007. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/jun/13/art

Il Posto. “Exhibición ‘Historia Natural de la Destrucción’.” November 22, 2021. Accessed March 24, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMqdqEENhtc&t=564s Landi, Ann. “Nari Ward: Poetic Justice.” ArtNEWS, January 16, 2013. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/nari-ward-poetic-justice-2151/ McChesney, Lea S. “The Power of Pottery: Hopi Women Shaping the World.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 35, no. 3 – 4 (2007): 230 - 247. Mufwene, S. Sangol. lingua franca. Encyclopedia Britannica. August 12, 2010. https://www.britannica.com/topic/lingua-franca Okun, Tema. “White Supremacy Culture: Still Here.” ​Dismantling Racism Works, May 2021. Accessed April 25, 2022. https://www.dismantlingracism.org/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/white_supremacy_culture_-_still_here.pdf

Rath, Brian. “The barbershops of west Africa.” The Guardian, September 8, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/africa-photography-andrew-esiebo Schwendener, Martha. “Nari Ward Shows the Power of Objects at Museums.” The New York Times, March 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/arts/design/nari-ward-review-new-museum.html SFO Museum. “Extra O! African Barbershop and Hairdressing Signs.” Accessed March 3, 2022. https://www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/extra-o-african-barbershop Shook, Beth. “Hidden Identities: Paintings and Drawings by Jorge Tacla,” Reviewed.” Washington City Paper, November 13, 2015. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/198265/hidden-identities-paintings-and-drawings-by-jorge-tacla-reviewed/ S. McChesney, Lea. “Producing ‘Generations in Clay.” Expedition Magazine 36.1 (1994): n. pag. Expedition Magazine, Penn Museum, 1994. Accessed April 26, 2022. http://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/?p=4607

Turner, Hannah. “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5 – 6 (2015): 658 - 676. University of Massachusetts Medical School. “Cultural Approaches to Pediatric Palliative Care in Central Massachusetts: Ghanaian.” November 2, 2020. https://libraryguides.umassmed.edu/diversity_guide/ghanaian “Up From the Center of the Earth. Pueblo Art from the Tufts University Southwest Native American Collection” (2012 – 2014). Tufts University Art Galleries, March 1, 2016. https://issuu.com/tuftsartgallery/docs/centerearth “Upheaval. Marcelo Brodsky, Jorge Tacla.” Tufts University Art Galleries. Tufts University Art Galleries, June 23, 2016. https://issuu.com/tuftsartgallery/docs/brochurepdf Urban Voices. “A Chilean artist reveals Hidden Identities FINAL.” July 8, 2019. Accessed March 25, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83c7mCS0Xgk Thanks to James Emmerman and Andrew Esiebo for their photographs.

Nari Ward in his studio, 2019. Photo: James Emmerman. Courtesy of James Emmerman Studio.  

Ghana. Census Office, and Survey Of Ghana. Predominant tribe in the area: Ghana. [Accra: Survey Division, ?, 1966] Map.  https://www.loc.gov/item/88692692/ 

Carl Moon, Hopi Woman Making Pottery,  ca. 1937-1943, oil on canvas,  Smithsonian American Art Museum , Gift of Mrs. Florence O.R. Lang, 1985.66.383,332.  

Hopi pots for sale in a Scottsdale, Arizona, shop. Established in 1969-70, the Old Territorial Shop was one of the first devoted to American Indian art to open in Scottsdale. The town is now a major locale for the sale of American Indian art. Photo: Christopher Burnett. Expedition Magazine 36.1 (1994).  

Jorge Tacla

Charles Thomson's design for the Great Seal of the United States, 1782; Reports of Committees of Congress; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360;  National Archives