Kayla Washington

Reflective Writing Portfolio

Professor Hampton

February 2, 2018

Making Connections

Recently, I found myself at the National Gallery of Art. I did not attend this gallery for

leisurely purposes, but merely for an assignment in my Art History class. My task was to view a

portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci and observe other 12th through 15th century paintings. I knew to

expect the same boring portraits of white men and women, however, what I observed caused me

to question the status quo even more. Black people certainly existed during this time, but for

some reason there never seems to be a trace of black people, and people of color in general,

practicing art. The only mention of Africa seems to take an abrupt halt at Egypt, but even

Egyptians somehow are never fully presented as people of color. Were black artists and other

minority artists just nonexistent during the Medieval era and into the Early Renaissance? Or are

art historians and art exhibitions intentionally leaving out their works of art?

When I began to deeply ponder over the various questions that arose after that museum

visit, I realized that I have not once throughout my entire education been taught of great artists of

color in history, besides artists that are in the contemporary era. I imagine if the Egyptians were

able to create pyramids that are still standing to this day and their own writing systems, that were

based in images, then surely, they and others were creating other works of art. However, there

still is this substantial gap in art history that jumps from the Egyptians to the Greeks to the

Romans and then even more European art. I constantly hear about the greats, Michelangelo and

Da Vinci, but Africa, Asia, and South America certainly had their nations flourishing as well.
 My art history teacher started off our semester with an article by Kymberly N. Pinder that

critiques and explores Black representation in Western survey textbooks. Despite Pinder’s

substantial and heavily supported claim that black artists are given little to no representation in

textbooks, she still only mentions contemporary black artists. There is the usual mention of well-

known black artists, like Basquiat and Romare Bearden, but still no dive into periods before the

contemporary era. I certainly do not blame Pinder because the truth is, she most likely does not

know any black artists before this era, just like plenty of us. This “us” even includes my Art

History teacher, whom enjoys pointing out the biases in Western textbooks and history, but yet

still fails to give the class examples of black artists present during the Medieval era and Early

Renaissance. For Kymberly Pinder and a professor, who have both been given various degrees in

their field, to not know of any black art being created before the contemporary period, reveals the

crux of the problem. No matter how diligently one practices and studies in the field of Art

History, there will still be the inevitable white washing of history.

As someone in Fine Arts and who aspires to be a skilled black artist someday, I want this

erasure to be challenged. Maybe it will never be solved, but this problem plays a role in the story

to be told about every black artist to come. Will we be incorporated into textbooks with

Michelangelo and Da Vinci? Or will we simply be neglected to the point of extinction?