Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson’s Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum — Lecture 2

In this special lecture series Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson’s Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum, Dr. Cocoa M. Williams will discuss The Afric-American Picture Gallery, a little known work by activist William J. Wilson published in 1859

Framing Freedom: William J. Wilson’s Afric-American Picture Gallery as Ekphrastic Meditation

In this special lecture series Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson’s Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum, Dr. Cocoa M. Williams will discuss The Afric-American Picture Gallery, a little known work by activist William J. Wilson published in 1859.

Often seen as New York’s first Black culture critic, William J. Wilson was a frequent contributor to Black periodicals throughout the 1840s and 50s, where he wrote under the name “Ethiop” and as “Brooklyn Correspondent” for Frederick Douglass’ Paper.

Wilson’s experimental text The Afric-American Picture Gallery details through “ekphrasis” (a rhetorical device which provides a detailed description of art through another medium, such as poetry or prose), the paintings, sculptures, and drawings that are inside what he imagines will be America’s first Black museum.

Drawing upon her research for her forthcoming book Museums of the Mind: The Ekphrastic Imagination in the African American Speculative Tradition, Dr. Williams will explore “ekphrasis” as a tool of the Black imagination to create out of words what is not always readily accessible and tangible in the “real” world.

This lecture series is supported by the Mellon-funded Digital in the Publishing in the Humanities initiative at Emory University and presented in partnership with Atlanta History Center.