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Balancing empathy and aesthetic in displays of horrific artifacts

Writer's picture: Cait McQuadeCait McQuade

Updated: Jan 28

New Orleans fascinates me; after a recent visit, even more so. I learned a surprising amount about civil engineering and flooding from Lyft and bus tour drivers. About how some people celebrate Halloween by just walking around, starting on October 27; they dress in elaborate costume in the morning and wander the French Quarter all day. And about many more things on a visit to the Historic New Orleans Collection.

long narrow room with framed images on the walls

They have a good history survey exhibition focused on the French Quarter and drawing on all the branches of their collection. I barely made it out of the very first space, which is lined with different kinds of maps, designed to explore with, to attract settlers, to guide tourists.


It’s a pretty traditional exhibit design, which fans of it might call “tasteful.” Creamy colors dominate. Simple frames and mats enclose all the flat things on the walls. The clutter of detailed text about all the items is neatly gathered on an iPad each room. The spaces don’t feel overcrowded.


person looking at a framed image on the wall in a museum gallery

As a result of these choices, there’s little or no variation in how the planners present each historical moment. Triumphant or tragic, personal or city-wide, older or more recent: only by examining the objects themselves or reading interpretive text do you find the distinctive character of each event or experience.


It’s a contrast—a restful contrast, in a way—to many history exhibitions that are crowded and noisy. I hardly noticed the overall design, at first. Then I came across the document just above the person's head in the photo above. It's a published list of people for sale in October, 1838. With handwritten notes on the money their enslavers earned from selling them. Here's a detail:

detail of a historic printed document with list of names and handwritten notations
Jim, a negro man, aged about 34 years, house servant. Sylvia, wife of Jim, negress, aged about 34 years, and a boy about 7 years old; Sylvia is a good washer and servant.

No one bought those three people that day.


Abruptly, the “tasteful” context felt wrong to me. Inappropriate. This piece of paper documented a violent and hateful relationship between people, and its minimalist mat and frame seemed inadequate to present its meaning. Not just inadequate. Dismissive. Ignorant.


I visited the museum alone, but later talked with the friend who had recommended it to me. He was right: the exhibition presents clear, abundant, and important stories from the city’s past. It does not avoid stories where people caused great harm to each other. In other parts of it, the planners had included this reluctant announcement that White people must endure sitting next to Black people on streetcars. And this copy of the Code Noir, rules for how people with African ancestry could be oppressed.


“What,” my friend asked, “could they have done differently?”


It was easy to say that the exhibition design should somehow acknowledge that these artifacts are different from others. But as I started imagining how that might be done, I wondered about my reaction.


First, many folks in museums still argue that “objects should speak for themselves.” I don’t believe that is possible. It is people who make meaning, not things. Visitors arrive with knowledge that shapes their understanding of the things they encounter, and each person’s understanding differs quite a lot from other people’s. In addition, everything around the objects in a museum influences how people interpret them. Even “neutral” white rooms in art museums are hollering a mid-20th-century perspective about the meaning of art. (Museums Are Not Neutral is a whole campaign.)


Still, there’s no question that the ad for enslaved people had a powerful effect on me, with no change in the visual cues around it. That artifact’s impact was perhaps more forceful because it caught me by surprise.


corner of a room with images and artifacts on the walls and in cases

Secondly, if the exhibition called out evidence of an inhumane society with a different visual context, what effect would that have on visitors’ reactions to the stories around other objects? Given the human tendency to prioritize the extreme and sensational, perhaps visitors would ignore other aspects of New Orleans’ history. Or perhaps they would view the other stories differently, seeing that activities we consider unproblematic were carried on alongside barbaric behavior. Are these reactions less or more desirable than my own?


By presenting brutal evidence in the same visual tone as less difficult items, perhaps the exhibition’s planners signal how enslavement was well integrated into American society.


While in New Orleans, I also visited Whitney Plantation, about an hour from the city. It is rare—perhaps unique—among former plantations. Visitors learn its history entirely from the perspective of people held captive there. At most plantations—or forced labor camps, as someone at the Whitney called them—guides and interpretive signage focus on the experience of the enslavers, not the enslaved. Some historic sites, like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia, offer separate tours for those wanting one perspective or the other. I don’t know if there are any plantations where you would hear both points of view on the same tour.


I still think the Historic New Orleans Collection’s exhibition design is wrong-footed. Given where we stand in the history of museums, it seems regressive to me. But I recognize that it can still be effective. Enslaving people was and is an evil action, that is simple. But the ways in which we respond to and discuss that evil can be diverse and complex.

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