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In 1915, Marcel Duchamp bought a snow shovel at a hardware store in New York City. He inscribed his signature and the date on its wooden handle. On the evening this episode is released, the fourth version of this classic “ready-made,” which he titled “In Advance of the Broken Arm,” will be auctioned off at Christie’s during their 20th Century Evening Sale. It’s estimated to sell for $2 million to $3 million.
How could a simple snow shovel be valued at such a steep price? Was Duchamp an unmatched genius, or a product of some of the biggest museums’ dirtiest little secrets: the results of pure, unadulterated capitalism?
Northeastern University professor, essayist, poet, and editor Eunsong Kim has illuminated the underlying influences of industrial capitalism and racism behind some of the most prized museum collections in her new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property. She traces how Duchamp was brought to prominence through the patronage of collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg, heirs of a fortune wrought by the steel industry. Their family operated steel mills in the same setting as titans such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, whose wealth also underlies their own valuable art collections.
And as it turns out, the “death of the author,” celebrated in conceptual art like that of Duchamp, is a convenient idea for the ultrawealthy. Devaluing labor pairs well with violent crackdowns on striking workers to deny them adequate pay. Or even Frederick Winslow Taylor's development of “scientific management,” a system that is still cited today but is based on the idealization of the slave plantation.
How much of the Modernist archive was canonized by union-busting bosses? How much of conceptual art in the 20th and 21st centuries has been buoyed by the reverence of scientific management? In this episode, Editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian sits down to talk with Kim about her new volume, which challenges generations of unquestioned received knowledge and advocates for a new vision of art beyond cultural institutions. In the process, they discuss the craft of writing, how a White artist was counted as a Black artist at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and how Marcel Duchamp got away with selling bags of air.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
How could a simple snow shovel be valued at such a steep price? Was Duchamp an unmatched genius, or a product of some of the biggest museums’ dirtiest little secrets: the results of pure, unadulterated capitalism?
Northeastern University professor, essayist, poet, and editor Eunsong Kim has illuminated the underlying influences of industrial capitalism and racism behind some of the most prized museum collections in her new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property. She traces how Duchamp was brought to prominence through the patronage of collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg, heirs of a fortune wrought by the steel industry. Their family operated steel mills in the same setting as titans such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, whose wealth also underlies their own valuable art collections.
And as it turns out, the “death of the author,” celebrated in conceptual art like that of Duchamp, is a convenient idea for the ultrawealthy. Devaluing labor pairs well with violent crackdowns on striking workers to deny them adequate pay. Or even Frederick Winslow Taylor's development of “scientific management,” a system that is still cited today but is based on the idealization of the slave plantation.
How much of the Modernist archive was canonized by union-busting bosses? How much of conceptual art in the 20th and 21st centuries has been buoyed by the reverence of scientific management? In this episode, Editor-in-chief Hrag Vartanian sits down to talk with Kim about her new volume, which challenges generations of unquestioned received knowledge and advocates for a new vision of art beyond cultural institutions. In the process, they discuss the craft of writing, how a White artist was counted as a Black artist at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and how Marcel Duchamp got away with selling bags of air.
Subscribe to Hyperallergic on Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
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Creators & Guests
What is Hyperallergic?
News, developments, and stirrings in the art world with host Hrag Vartanian, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic.
So then the idea of, like, this is, in the democratic marketplace of ideas, this was the best idea, or this was, like, the most democratic or the most inventive or the most expressive, like, I think that's a mythology.
Speaker 2:Right. And I
Speaker 1:think that we can push that mythology, and I think that the discourse is strong enough to be pushed.
Speaker 2:Hello, and welcome back to the Hyperallergic Podcast. Today, we're talking with essayist, educator, editor, and poet, Eunseong Kim, a professor at Northeastern University. She's the author of a new book, The Politics of Collecting, Race and the Aestheticization of Property. We're gonna talk a little bit about a few of the large museums and their dirty little secrets, the racism, capitalism, and colonialism that, as the book's description says, situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. She challenges our understanding of Marcel Duchamp, one of the so called greats of 20th century art and conceptual art in general as something that's not separated from the racial capitalism that defines American society.
Speaker 2:She challenges our ideas of what artistic success is and advocates for a new vision of art beyond cultural institutions. What I love about this book is it really pushes us to think beyond what we think is true. Is that idea you heard in college or read in a book somewhere, is that really what is happening here? Then she goes on to challenge some thinkers who might think that they got it right. And after reading this book, you kinda wonder whether they do.
Speaker 2:That's what we want in a book, isn't it? Something that really confronts the reality in a new and fresh way. We have a lot to talk about from the craft of writing to union busting steel titans who determined what was canonized in the modernist archive. So let's get started. So today, we have a very, very special guest, Eunseong Kim, who is somebody I've been following for years and whose work I greatly respect and is a professor in the department of English and Northeastern and, has a new book, Politics of Collecting, which I cannot wait to talk about.
Speaker 2:I will say first thing well, first of all, welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I was telling, Viken, my partner yesterday that there is an art world before this book and an art world after. Oh, no. And I really believe that because I think it's rare to find someone who really engages with these ideas in a full frontal way, like in this way of just like you're dealing with them directly. But I think generously, I think very archival, like strong archival research. You're bringing your interest in this breadth of the art world that I think only comes from this kind of being able to work in different, modes.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's a coincidence you're a poet because I think poets have this incredible ability in the history of art, to sort of see things for what they are.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I mean, I should say that I don't think any, I I do not claim to be an art historian, and I do not think they want to claim me. So I I think, I write about my interest in aesthetics, but it is not through the discipline
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:The disciplinary structures of art history. I should make that clear.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I don't think anyone thinks it does. So I I I think, the beauty of this book, in my opinion, is the fact that you take on these big ideas and you do merge art, contemporary art, and modern art with poetry as well. Right. And you don't see these as separate.
Speaker 2:You don't sequester them because you don't use a market thinking.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Which I really appreciate.
Speaker 1:Well, I I I always tell my students and I tell people that, I don't do PR. Like, I'm not in public relations. So there's no reason for my thinking and my argument to be market specific.
Speaker 2:Right. Absolutely. There's so many directions, but I'm gonna probably concentrate mostly on some of the big ideas. So, you know, because people should read the book. Right?
Speaker 2:And I think as I as I said before interview, I think I'm gonna have to read it 3 times. You know?
Speaker 1:Well, I should say that you actually you were formative to the book because you read a very early version. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean comments That's so kind of you. The
Speaker 1:criticisms really did shape how I thought about, structuring the book. So
Speaker 2:thank you. That's I mean, that's very kind. But, you know, what I read was not exactly what I had read read this in this book is not exactly what I read initially. This is a whole different book. And and I think even more in-depth than, you know, we initially talked and, I mean, the amount of things you found and okay.
Speaker 2:Let's just start. Okay. Because I think this is where this comes from. So let's just start with the title, you know, because one of your one of the specializations you have is talking about racialization and aesthetics Mhmm. And how those intersect.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Do you wanna talk to us a little bit about your your own sort of history in terms of how you got to that place where those topics are of interest to you?
Speaker 1:So I think that maybe people, might be more familiar in terms of discussing, discourses of race in terms of inclusion and exclusion.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So, you know, I I it's not that I'm not a fan of this methodology, but the methodology of trying to figure out, like, how many non white artists, how many x number of artists are in a show in the anthology. Yep. And I don't think that, counting is trivial. I I do think it matters. But something that I thought a lot about throughout my studies, but also in my teaching, is how race is not just a matter of counting the number of people in the room, But the ways in which certain kinds of ideas and a hierarchy of ideas or how ideology, becomes naturalized as just the way that things are.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So that is something that I'm trying to grapple with in the book, that, what we think of as property or what we think of aesthetic property is actually firmly rooted in an understanding of a colonial dynamic of race.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right. So tell us a little bit about your own writing. Because I I think, you know, I think understanding your own writing
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is going to help people understand this. But I also want people to know that you're also a poet, and you've written a book of poetry. Mhmm. And you've published many places, And you've written art criticism, and you've also written, you know, other critical essays of all sorts. So
Speaker 1:Who am I as a writer? I mean, I was so generously mentored, I should say, as a student by my dissertation advisors, Fatima Al Talib and Paige Dubois, who really encouraged me not to think of disciplines as boundaries. Mhmm. But also, but not in this way where I am entitled to everything because through a kind of narcissistic entitlement, but more so that, like, that I should I should honor and observe, like, the the ways in which my interest through poetry actually might extend to the ideas that I'm interested in in terms of my critical thinking, and then how what those relationships are to my, art writing. So, I think when we first met, I was doing kind of, like, early writing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Like, I did, like, a very, very early review of the Whitney Biennial. I wanna see
Speaker 2:But, I mean, it was an incredible review.
Speaker 1:It was, me and a friend of mine, Maya Mac MacKendall. We reviewed the Whitney Biennial, and we did, something that I just spoke about a few minutes ago of we counted, really. We counted the presence of, you know, artists of color in particular, but we also had a critique of Joe Scanlon's project
Speaker 2:Yes. In
Speaker 1:that. The
Speaker 2:now Woolford.
Speaker 1:Yes. And we really tried to take apart what it meant for his, you know, Avatar project, to be included in the biennial with the picture of a black actress. And I I think that it was described as a kind of polemic. I was young enough then and maybe even now that I did not really know that, you don't publish essays that really say things explicitly. That you're supposed to write in a way that's massaged and,
Speaker 2:layered and and nuanced. Right? That's the that's the favorite word.
Speaker 1:Right. So it was like, it's easily dismissed if you do not have this kind of, like, nuanced, like, self apologetic, self effacing, but also, like, understanding of mode of address. And we were young enough that we were just like, this is what we think, everyone. And then the new inquiry published it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we were like, oh, okay. I don't know. I think that a lot of my impulses still remain. Like, I I I was telling someone the other day that I think I'm, like, missing an enzyme or something. I'm, like, missing something that seems to exist.
Speaker 1:Like, I can't get past sometimes, like, the first question. Like, with a Joe Scanlon's Donna Wolfe for project, I I just really couldn't get past I could not get past the first description to the other thing. So it's like I have a very hard time getting to, like, the thing that apparently, like, the curators were very comfortable being in. Right? Like, this, like, what is the artist's persona?
Speaker 1:And, like, art what is the historical mechanisms in which the artist takes up like, I can't get past that first step. And so a lot of my writing actually, grapples with this kind of a priority question of, like, what is considered the foundation? Like, how do how how is it that, Duchamp becomes the author of this form that, apparently is so liberatory. And so, I mean, I do think that there's something about the way that this book is also written, but perhaps the way that I've been writing, which is, like, I just I want more discourse on the the thing that, like, is the considered the foundation. Like, this is the foundation in which we have the conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm like, well, I don't know. Like, I I I I have so many questions actually.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I know that I'm not the only one.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I'm gonna read little things, and I want you to respond to them because, I mean, they're pretty provocative. And just also, I just want people to know that she's a really good writer. So, you know and that's what the pleasures of this because there are some sentences that are like, oh, just hits you in the gut.
Speaker 2:So I'm gonna start with this one. This is in the introduction on the racial politics of the avant garde. The desire to leave behind older traditions in the pursuit of newer ones should be understood as part of the theoretical justification of colonization?
Speaker 1:I mean, yes. You are it is so much it's fundamental to how colonial thinking operates that it's a program of assistance. Right? That's why they always talk about, you know, the train infrastructure or sometimes like, a kind of military infrastructure and they they
Speaker 2:Avant garde. The word itself, right? Exactly.
Speaker 1:You know? It's always, it's narrated as there is a kind of good involved and the good is is that you were no longer in the past and that you are now through colonialism, you've moved into the present. And without colonialism, it's unclear if you will move into the present. I don't know if aesthetics, the way that it's currently narrated as a sort of like avant garde. What is considered avant garde is critical of the ways in which colonial dynamics have existed in the past.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And we should probably explain a little Joe Scanlon for those people who don't know who he is. He's a he's a professor of art at Princeton.
Speaker 2:Princeton. Right? A white middle aged, professor, American who, in the work work, Donnell Wolford, hires black women, black middle aged women to play an avatar as a artist. A Richard right. Who then, you know, is presented, and in the case of the Whitney Biennial, was actually counted as an artist of color.
Speaker 1:Yes. Because only appeared as Donna Wolford. When we were looking through the catalog, it was clear that, like, there was a picture, an artist picture of, you know, this person who was supposed to be Donna Wolford. And then the curators sort of cited, like, arts and, like, death of the Author as a way to sort of really, like, think about the excitement of Joe Scanlon. So, you know, upon further research, it became clear that, Joe Scanlon himself, he says, like, Donald Wilford was a character that he invented, an artist persona he invented.
Speaker 1:The name is taken from a football player, actually.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And, the character was imagined as a like, a undergraduate student of his who is his assistant, who makes art because, like, they're in Joe Scanlon's studio and then, like, sees, like, the leftover materials and then uses those materials to, like, make art, and that's how they become an artist. Right. So there are, like, layers and layers that I I just think would be really important to, like, untangle, such as, like, what does it mean for this white artist to take the name of a football player and then imagine, like, an undergraduate student doing this? But also this isn't just any football player. It's a black football player.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And it's, like, it's through his, like, garbage or, like, the scraps in his art, like, studio in which, like, this character becomes birthed as their own artist, but then it really turns out, like, the art that they do is, like, great paintings. It's, like, the most
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:White man paintings.
Speaker 2:And corporate. Corporate. And the most corporate. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like a kind of, like, you know, a kind of Frank Stella, like, 4 point o type of painting. Right. Right. And then beyond that, like, in the performances, this character was to do, like, Richard Pryor jokes. And I think, like, what really made me wonder I mean, all of this made me wonder, but it's how proudly he proclaimed that he hires different actresses, different black actresses to play this character.
Speaker 1:So, I mean, I think that that that project onto itself is like a is a case study for a book that needs to be written, which is what is the kind of art that so many institutionally recognized curators think is important? Like, what is it about? Like, how did death of the author become a way to no longer ask, like, questions of, like, ethics, questions of employment, questions of labor Right. Questions of race, questions of power? I I don't I all I also think, like, I'm not even that much of a Foucauldian, but after Bard's, there's also, like, Foucault's response, what is an author?
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Where he, like, very explicitly points out, like, the death of the author can't be the entitlement of the reader to bypass the author. I mean, I'm like once again, like, thinking about it, it's like I'm missing some kind of enzyme where I'm like, so many people, like, seemed so okay to, like, rush past that. Well And and I just think that those are the fundamental questions that actually ground so much of, the ways in which art continues to be taught and made.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I mean, the reason I sort of hesitate there was not I don't think there's necessarily, like I just think there are professional pitfalls when you do raise those questions. I think for some people because and this is, I think, something I've been really eager to sort of explore myself, which is, you know, we have to get to a place where we can acknowledge mistakes, even those we make ourselves
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And get to a new place. And I feel like there isn't a mechanism because all when we ever we, you know, we admit that there's a mistake, it's almost like we're penalized for it. Right. Right? It's a punitive sort of, like, mentality.
Speaker 2:Right. And I do think we have to get to a place. Like, if Joe Scanlon woke up tomorrow and said, you know what? You're right. You're right.
Speaker 2:That would that sucks. Well, he is not a year.
Speaker 1:You know? He has 10 year then. He has 10 year now. And and the last I heard from him is, was an article, from the Princeton University student newspaper where he assigned a series of books that had racial, like, racial slurs, or, like, the author, the poet themselves uses, like, you know, the n word and other dynamics. And he had students, like, read it out loud.
Speaker 1:He he himself read it out loud. And I I feel like this current generation, they maybe also also were, like, no to Right. To this in the classroom. But as to the as to the conversation around, like, okay, will you be excluded from future shows as an artist if you criticize or you critique the curator? I mean, I think criticism is actually, like, a very close and deep inspection of something.
Speaker 1:It's a close examination. It is not the process of dismissal. It's, like, really examining the structures that produce,
Speaker 2:I I'm with you.
Speaker 1:It's a
Speaker 2:form of love even.
Speaker 1:I mean, yes. But it's it's like whether it's love or whether it's, like, deep feeling
Speaker 2:Well, love for a field. I mean, I don't mean for the person. I mean, for the field. Absolutely. The the love of wanting to make a field stronger, better, more more representative of Right.
Speaker 2:Your actual ideas and the truths that we see in front
Speaker 1:of us. Absolutely. And I actually even wanna say, like, maybe it isn't always the responsibility of individual artists. Yep. But, like, at some point, it's like, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, then who is going to talk about this? Like, who is it the person who says they study museums? Is it the person who study says that they study, shows? Is it the person who studies publishing? Is it the tenured faculty?
Speaker 1:Is it the people who just write about it because this is their community? Yeah. It can't just be that, like, you know, it's the fear of rejection from community or from spaces that make it so that you never say anything. I have a hard time with that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm gonna read something else because I love this. I mean, the introduction was great in general. So you know?
Speaker 2:But it's it's blows my mind. After I read the introduction, I had to read it again. And then just I was like, so much. The way in which US and European museums are not collections that hold proof of their crimes, but rather that their continued spatial existence constitutes the crime. They do not hold the proof.
Speaker 2:They are the proof. And, of course, all these are footnoted and discussions of these are elsewhere as well, but you sort of condense this. Mhmm. One of the things about that that I loved was people really struggle when you criticize museums.
Speaker 1:They struggle.
Speaker 2:They struggle. Like, the struggle is real. And and they often try to demonize you, you know, when you when you criticize, you're like, but that's where I would escape to, or or that's where I came of age, or, you know, I took an art class there and it changed my life or something. And you're like, but that's not what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, the the same person who gives this story, the former CEO of the Getty Museum, he also, in a piece where he argues against artifact repatriation
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:He gives the story of being in Paris and, like, looking at all the objects and thinking, like, of course, like, you know, museums must hold these objects so that we can all be connected to each other. And he says this. He gives this personal anecdote about being in the museum space and being able to encounter these objects as a way for colonial legacies to continue. So if if for those for for others who want to use personal anecdotes like that, like, just know that that's the company in which you might find yourself.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I think that museums are some of the most, vibrant places in which it can accept critique. As in, like
Speaker 2:I'm with you.
Speaker 1:They are they're financially and institutional history wise, have have some of, like, the I think that they're actually strong enough. They're not fragile. This
Speaker 2:is Especially not art museums. Art? Maybe some of the history museums and the smaller ones Maybe.
Speaker 1:But even then, I think, like, I I actually I I have a I have trouble with, kind of, like, defense of abstract institutions. Like, I I feel like, it's one thing to, like, defend a person who you trust or you're in a relationship with for whatever reason, publicly, if that's what you want to do. But, like, when you defend a museum, you're defending, like, an institution that, like, is literally it's like a it's an abstraction of, like, the various people who work there. And so and and then secondly, it's like just because we have like individual encounters in the museum that are profound, it doesn't mean that like the spaces aren't robust enough for like very rigorous critique. Like rigorous beyond like let's do another show or let's do 2 shows or let's hire, like, a handful of people.
Speaker 1:I actually think that all the people who work there and the various artists that might flow in and out of the space, it would be more conducive to the world if we can have, like, conversations around, like, the way that certain things were founded and the land, labor history of the particular places.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. And I think people have maybe adjusted to deal with maybe historical objects. But I think what your book does that really is gonna be a huge contribution is you bring it to modern art. Do you know in a way that I think, you know, I I saw Glenn Lowry at a panel, you know, in, like, I think it was in Abu Dhabi, like, arguing, like, well, that doesn't really concern us because we're a modern art institution. Right?
Speaker 2:Because I think it's the idea that somehow in the modern era, those objects are not problematic because they've all been built for the market or for whatever. And I think what you're saying is actually much more complicated.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You're saying that, actually, these are about labor, and you're talking about the managerial aesthetics
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Of of these and how they're they're mimicking a a type of capitalism that the patron class appreciates.
Speaker 1:Well, yes. I think that the best way to think about, the you know, I don't wanna say the word, but also I will. Like, the best way to think about, like, NFTs or, like, a kind of digital, digitized forms of property is actually to understand the history of modern art.
Speaker 2:And it's isn't it amazing how many people are pulling up Duchamp for NFTs? It's incredible. It's incredible. They're obsessed with Duchamp as if he's, like, the only person too.
Speaker 1:Well, it's
Speaker 2:And that's the only way to see art.
Speaker 1:Yes. And but but also, I think you mentioned this the last time we spoke that he sold air. Like, he sold bags of air. So I I do think that he is this kind of useful vehicle to discuss a kind of like long duration of how people begin to think about what it means to sell something. Like, are you selling something because this is your idea?
Speaker 1:Right. And then who how does this become metastasized? And how does the patron class interact with these ideas?
Speaker 2:Right. You write, in making connections between the personal art collections as museum and the procedure of donating one's art collection to an established museum, you're looking at the parallel histories of scientific management, conceptual art. It's through scientific management that the materialist histories of, in this case, the Frick collection and the Ariesberg collection of works by Duchamp, which is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, those seemingly disparate in aesthetic styles are crystallized.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I think, I think that there's a I once again, I'm not an art historian, but the way that I understand art history is periodization and, classification through forms. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think so.
Speaker 1:We're like, thinking about forms is important. So, like, something like The Frick Collection is different from the Arensberg collection of modern art, especially like Duchamp, because The Frick Collection has, like, the old masters.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Maybe. Like, maybe this is how, like, someone might differentiate the 2 of them.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I think it's less, obvious that both collections are financialized through steel. So Mhmm. Orangeburg Walter Orangeburg's grandfather, also operated a steel foundry, within the the same, like, area in which, like, Carnegie and Frick operated their steel foundry. Theirs was smaller. The Orangeburg family's was smaller.
Speaker 1:But it's the same kind of material, like, or extractive capitalism that makes it so that art collecting becomes something that both families participate in. That's not how I think aesthetic history or, like, aesthetic understandings of collections are thought of.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And and I do think that that's a really important thing for all of us to just think about is, like, what does it mean that so much material history actually comes from extractive industries, particularly steel, in that moment in time?
Speaker 2:And then you talk about the rise of Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management and how it was made possible by deunionization and analyzing the colonial history of it, which you say is modeled partly after his deep admiration of the slave plantation Yes. As the most efficient site of management.
Speaker 1:Yes. Caitlin Rosenthal has a great book called Accounting for for Slavery, where she looks at Taylor's admiration of the of the plantation site and and charts that kind of history that they thought it was the most kind of, structurally sound place where managerial studies could really be invented. So I try to put together, like, this kind of history that I think that, you know, I would love to hear, like, your thoughts and other people's thoughts on this. But so I trace in the first chapter how frickin' Carnegie deunionized the the steel industries in which they are they are at the helm of the steel industries. And Carnegie, at the time of the Homestead Strike of 18/92, was the richest man in the world.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But it's really post that strike, and it's when the dehumanization happens, that US Carnegie's, steel company goes from him being the richest man in the world to the 1st $1,000,000,000 company, under what is considered US Steel. And now there's a different history of US Steel. That's, like, the end of chapter 1. In chapter 2, I take up how the deunionization of the steel industries makes it so that someone like Frederick Taylor, who thinks that actually the slave plantation is the site in which, like, we can really reimagine efficient scientific management.
Speaker 1:Right. And he tests these ideas on steel and, like, mills that are no longer unionized. So he does things like he it's called, like, time motion studies, where he tries to like time workers. I should also say that all of the workers refused. Like they refused all of the experiments and it's like not a science.
Speaker 1:Right. And it's unclear if anyone even thinks that it's ever been done. However, it's still cited and, people still kind of like teach these principles. And something like, central planning really comes out of his ideas that, like, you can move all of the process work to management. So the management decides how it's going to be done.
Speaker 1:And the worker is no longer, quote unquote, thinking, but they are just using their hands. So they are called, like, hand workers versus, like, the mind workers. And it's only at the site in which, like, unions no longer exist that he can do these experiments.
Speaker 2:So now let's talk about I mean, we're not gonna go into all the artists because you've talked about a number of them. But Duchamp figures large in this conversation. And the part that really clicked for me was when you talked about the use of Duchamp as a shield Mhmm. And not just him, but in general, there's certain kind of ideas, even sometimes the concept of different concepts or understandings of Marxism, for instance. But these things are being used as shields to stop some of the conversations Yes.
Speaker 2:That we should be having. Yeah. So how does that work in your opinion? Like, how is Duchamp being used? And I do I see it.
Speaker 2:I see it. I NFTs was a great example. Right? Like, it's it's almost like NFTs. Soon as someone cited Duchamp, everyone sort of, like, bowed their head.
Speaker 2:Yes. Do you know in this kind of referential way? And you're like, wait. Why are you doing that? That's like I mean, you can see why some people think of contemporary art or modern art as kinda cult y that way.
Speaker 2:Because it does sort of it does. I mean, he's like the holy book. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, he's a very fascinating figure. Not him, the person, but him, the the critical narrative rendition of him and that, like, he's always contemporary.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like, I think there's something so fascinating about, like, appropriation art or conceptual art and found art and the avant garde, which is, like, definitely even over a 100 years old at this point. But and when he's invoked, it's, like, always, like, for a contemporary purpose or, like, you know, to explain the NFT or to critique the NFT. Like, it's the the fact that he might be that the critical framing of him could be pushed doesn't seem to he's not like no one lampoons him the way that I think, like, some of, like, the quote unquote older people kind of get this treatment. But my interest in him, there's, like, a multifold interest in him in using sort of the critical narrative around him, but also the patronage relationship that you can really understand through the permanent collections that house his work. So the the first thing that I say in the second chapter is I don't mean to say that, like, found object art is only scientific management, but it is something to think about that the 2 are happening at the same time.
Speaker 2:And And I do think some people are gonna read that going, well, that's what she says and dismiss it because it's like, no. You're actually saying let's complicate this. Yes. You know, let's make this more complicated in some ways, but also let's acknowledge that certain things are not the way they're presented.
Speaker 1:Well, let's acknowledge that there is a movement towards this thing called the managerial class. That's true. That there is this there there is something that's happening where a notion of a mind work, a notion of a work that's elevated that is not of the body is being formed simultaneously, that that, like, the found object happens. So economically, that is something that is happening. There's, like, congressional hearings around this.
Speaker 1:There's worker protests around this. Like, I don't think that these are inconsequential. I think that they are fundamentally related. I also think, I chart, like, in the 3rd chapter that Duchamp comes to the US through patronage support. Right?
Speaker 1:So, like, Walter and Sharnsberg, they invite him. They, house him in they're, like they own, like, I think the studio in which he lives. He lives, like, above them. And, then they support him. They support him to be an artist, and they collect his work.
Speaker 1:And the thing that I really kind of trace is how finding a permanent collection for their collection or a permanent museum home for their personal collection becomes like a like a mission, a life mission for them, but also something that, they ask Duchamp to do. Like, they they give him, they finance these endeavors so that, this could be part of, like, his life and their life together. So I think that, like, all of this is, something that might be useful when we're thinking about how museums are shaped and who is in the collection, who is not in the collection, how do collections become made. So, like, if I received a version of modern art history, modern aesthetic history, that is, like, this is, like, really exciting ideas, and these are the ideas that then we, like, study and we learn about and then we, like, make art from, I think that's one way to really very quietly and explicitly discuss how these are the best ideas, these ideas have merit, and also, like, these are the objects that have merit. I wonder in this conversation then, in the questions around merit, what it would do for the conversation if we were to talk about how these were the objects that the patron, those who had wealth and access to certain forms of wealth and certain forms of collections, pushed for.
Speaker 1:So, like, I also, like, describe how in the archival correspondences, Duchamp is meeting with, like, people at the MET, people at the Art Institute of Chicago. He's also meeting people at the Philadelphia Museum of of Art, as you mentioned. And, also, like, Arensberg is, like, talking to UCLA's, like, ArtPlace and, like, Walker. And, you know, there becomes a little bit of a what could be considered a bidding war, where, like, the Met and Art Institute, they're like, okay. Well, we will accept your collection, and we won't break it up for, like, 5 years or 10 years.
Speaker 1:And then the Philadelphia Museum of Art, they offer 25.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So that it's not only that they will accept the donation, it's that they will hold the collection as is. They will not break it up. So it's like the way that he conceived of the collection, the patrons conceived of the collections, will be on view that particular Integral. It's integral. 5 years, and everything was discussed, like real estate, like where which rooms
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Which ceilings, which windows. Like, I think that the technical kind of parameters of this like, there's an economist that I admire very much, Joon Chung, and he says, like, there are political differences embodied in what looks like a technical difference. And I think that, like, you know, if we're really thinking about, like, the history of art, I think it's so important to think about or the history of aesthetics, because I'm not just thinking about art. Mhmm. I think we should think about, like, what are the acquisition policies of each museum, and what does it mean for some people to have access to the curators you have who oversee the acquisition policy?
Speaker 1:And this is not a democratic process. No. Not at all.
Speaker 2:So it's presented that way, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely presented.
Speaker 2:And a meritocracy.
Speaker 1:A fundamental meritocracy.
Speaker 2:It's Right.
Speaker 1:Present. And I think that that is actually a travesty to say, like, if you are a passionate artist, then you can make the
Speaker 2:kind of You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.
Speaker 1:And the thing is is that I think that that's a separate conversation from the fact that, like, I do think expression is a part of life.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:So so, like, should ever should it be democratic? That's a separate conversation from what are the institutions and what are the ways in which one is collected in the institution. And sometimes being collected by the institution doesn't even mean something like what the Arensbergs negotiated for their collection, which is 25 years of uninterrupted. And I think they haven't actually broken it up.
Speaker 2:No. I think it's actually been longer than that.
Speaker 1:Yes. Absolutely. I I mean, I went a few years ago, and it was still intact. So I I I just think that there are layers to the conversation that my book only sort of started researching. There we might need to do more research
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Into these processes.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah. And, you know, it's it's funny you say that because when I go into that room now, it feels almost like going into the British Museum. Do you know these sort of, like, exhibits that don't change? Yes.
Speaker 2:Do you know? And you're, like, back okay. And I'm here again. And they feel the same, and they're still and they feel a little vintage. Right?
Speaker 2:They're not they it's not quite it's not quite up to, like, 2024. You know?
Speaker 1:There's a letter, I can't remember if I took it out. Maybe I did, where they Walter Arensberg is very upset because they are going to have, like, an opening. But the opening is going to be for, like, the modern art section, and there's no separate party for his collection. And this this also creates a series of back and forth
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like Fiskimball, like, you know, there's, like, another series of back and forths. And I think that if we look at it that way, then the history of scientific management or who becomes the managerial class because I should also say, like, Walter and Louise Arensberg, they did not work. This is what they did. They spent they spent time, you know, cultivating a collection or amassing a collection that would one day be donated. I don't think that, economically speaking, they would be removed from the the people who have a vested interest in separating mind and high hand.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And I do wanna say that part of this has to do with the mythologies. Right? Yes. That's what you're that's what you're also dissecting.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Because, you know, there's this great line here, and I'm only gonna read part of it because I think it's relevant to this is to untangle the conflation of modernist and avant garde, origin myths.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Do you know? And I think this is part of what you're saying is, you know, we are actually not looking at the things except for these mythologies.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:Do you know? And that's the part here that I think is really important because it's not like you're saying, no. These are not legitimate, you know, artworks or something. But you're saying that they're being seen through this lens, and no one's actually scrutinizing why they came to be that way.
Speaker 1:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:Do you know? And I think that's am I am I understanding? Yes.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Right. So then the idea of, like, this is, in the democratic marketplace of ideas, this was the best idea or this was, like, the most democratic or the most inventive or the most expressive. Like, I think that's a mythology. Right.
Speaker 2:And I
Speaker 1:think that we can push that mythology, and I think that the discourse is strong enough to be pushed.
Speaker 2:Right. I'm gonna read something else. So I have all these little tabs, so I'm just sort of, like, conjuring them up as we go along. To assert that there are common objects waiting to be discovered by someone who could see their potential, quote, unquote, potential demonstrates the paradox that art historians, artists, and writers continue to make about the politics and not the labor of avant garde art. The avant garde artist is the artist against tradition, a position that is ethically and politically superior to the traditional artist while simultaneously above the quote, unquote common and politically removed from work.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think what I like about that sentence is partly that you sort of show the fact that, you know, that already suggests a certain identity
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right? Of the artist. Who would be above work? Mhmm. Right?
Speaker 2:We already know who that is. Mhmm. At least in the in the hierarchy of American labor True. And racialized hierarchies. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't think that that's a woman, for instance. Do you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, work and labor are racialized this way. I mean, there's a separate book on, like, where craft would fit into this conversation. Right? And also, like, I had to try to make clear that I'm not I'm not romanticizing No.
Speaker 1:Like, the work, or I'm not I'm not trying to romanticize this act of making because I I also think that that's, that would be its own kind of mythology. Right. However, like, what does it mean to set up certain avant garde artists, certain modern artists as politically, radical or politically liberatory or politically Marxist or, you know, in that threshold. I think I'm once someone has described Duchamp as someone who, like, was the artist who refused to work. You know, like, he's radical because he, like, refuses to work.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, but the refusal of work is not a refusal of work. And so it's the abolition of work. It's, for a kind of critique of capitalism or colonialism. It's a way in which the work and the labor becomes alighted for something else, for the maintenance. Outsourced.
Speaker 2:Which is a term you use a lot Yes. Which I appreciate particularly because you talk about the outsourced labor and how, you know, the position of the authorship is completely dependent on the celebration of displaced risk
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Precisely mimicking our financial and political structures.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And you say I would extend this to argue that all phenomenon are dependent on whiteness as property. So you talk about how the fact that the transfer of risk can only take place when a property eligible subject is present to receive its gains. Yeah. Oh, throughout modernist and contemporary discourse, risk taking becomes aestheticized and risk transfer becomes, quote, innovative and laudable.
Speaker 1:Whiteness as property is a legal framework that Cheryl the legal scholar Cheryl Cheryl Harris takes up. And, The Aestheticization of Risk and Wartime is an essay by Jane Blocker. So I'm pulling from both of those, thinkers as I work through this idea. But right, like, this this is another mythology. It's like, is the person who has the idea, is that the most is that the artist?
Speaker 1:Is it what is so difficult about having the idea? What is the idea actually? Like Well, it's also
Speaker 2:the idea. It's like I mean, I think there's this thing in the in the field of art where the I the idea that the idea is original
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And as opposed to you're laying claim to an idea Yes. That someone else may have also had or you heard.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do you know? I mean, as a writer, I know that sometimes you overhear a sentence somewhere, and you end up incorporating it into your text. I'm not the person who owns that. It's not an origin, but I think somehow in the art world, it's like laying claim. And I think it's true of art history too, I'm gonna be honest, and scholars.
Speaker 2:So, like, sometimes there's this idea of laying claim to something, which as we can imagine, very much fits into, your argument.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, I listened to many lectures thinking about this chapter, and there's one that I think I cite or maybe it was cut from the citation because the quote was cut. But the Khan Academy, I think that they make all these, like, educational videos. In their overview of Duchamp, they're talking to a curator, and they're talking about particularly the snow shovel piece. Yes.
Speaker 1:And, I see the the person who's, like, interviewing the curator was, like, well, what if I go to Home Depot and I buy a stubble? Like, can I also be an artist? Like, can I you know, is that the same? And the curator is astonished and is like, no. Like, what Duchamp did is, like, priceless.
Speaker 1:It's like there's no price on this. Like, what you do is not the same. And but, like, okay. Like, but really let's think about this. Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:What does it mean that, like, this what what the real thing that perhaps was was done through this thing called found or through the avant garde, moments around this mythology is that the person who is recognized as the artist, as the property eligible subject, they are granted a wider spectrum of objects to propertize. It is not that the category of artist actually broadens, or the the the ways in which one becomes an artist becomes broad. And it isn't that that the person who made the snow shovel is incorporated into a community of, makers who consider themselves as, like, part of the expression of life or modernism. It is it's that the subject of the artist and, like, the realm in which they're able to move, becomes bigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You talk about that in the book too that all these kind of innovation in the field hasn't really broadened the notion of the artist, really. I mean, it has, but it hasn't at all. Like, you know, because it's sort of like the artist still becomes this very special creature
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Who mimics the patron in many ways. Yeah. Do you know? And I think that's the part we we don't wanna talk about, you know, where where the artist does become very much a mirror of the patron. Right.
Speaker 2:You know? Or at least a certain kind of a lead patron.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know? The question would
Speaker 1:be, like, are ways in which expression is understood and expression is taught Mhmm. Culturally and structurally across the world? Like, what is our relationship to expression as people who call ourselves, like, humans? What Right. With all the fraught history of that, what's the relationship between, like, the ways in which, like, artists become respected or artists become more designated in society that, like, expression is, like, understood as something that's integral to life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. And actually, let me correct myself because you actually talk about the expansion of the notion of human. Yes. That was it more correctly. So I I take that back.
Speaker 2:It's not just artist. You were talking about human. Like, the artist hasn't really expanded our notion of human.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's actually so. Correction. Apologies for that. So now what where do you hope this book will land?
Speaker 2:You know, who how how do you think it will help people expand? Because one thing I'm learning as I'm in this field long enough is every generation reinvents things. And I think in the most wonderful ways that we can never imagine, and if we ever try to control it, we're just idiots, honestly, because I I I I wanna be wrong. I want to be able to learn something. I I hope we're all working towards truth Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're not working towards this idea of property of, like, this is mine. This is yours. This is but, you know, unfortunately, not everyone thinks like that. And how how do you hope people will sort of take this? I hope with generosity, because I think that what you've done is very generous here, to be honest.
Speaker 2:I think that the archival work, I mean, the ideas, that you've sort of introduced as well as sort of amplified. What do you think? There's always this, like, trickiness where, like, What do you think? There's always this, like, trickiness where, like, if
Speaker 1:we talk about, like, interdependency or if we talk about, you know, like, abolishing property, like, OpenAI basically thinks like, oh, you're talking about, you. Like, I I feel like like there's a way in which, like, notions and critiques become, like, weaponized against the people. It's not like we're saying that all language is shared and expressions and ideas are shared so, like, a corporation gets to claim ownership. Like, I think that that is actually often what happens.
Speaker 2:That's what's happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like For
Speaker 2:those of us who are very pro, like, you know, I was very anti copyright, but then I realized that that just created this thing where corporations just took over everything.
Speaker 1:Right. I I I think that this kind of, there is this thing that hap that I have been feeling for the past, like, few years where critique of historical formations, cultural formations, it almost makes it so that the corporate sectors figure out how to, like, rebrand or re like, renary what exactly that, like, it is that they're doing. And it's like but I don't want my critique. I don't want our critique to just be, like, more fodder for them to to propertize. So I yeah.
Speaker 1:I should I just I wanted to say that. But I, I watched this YouTube review of my book actually by this creator named Shannon Kim. Think
Speaker 2:Oh, I I watched it too. Really. I
Speaker 1:loved it. I loved it so much. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Me too.
Speaker 1:I loved it so much. I loved it so much because I thought that she well, I was so, like, I was so grateful that she read it. And I think that she was also, like, trying to really wrestle with, like, how perhaps, like, there are questions of labor, but then how does questions of, like, you know, new forms, new technological forms, like, play into this? And I thought, like, I think these are the questions that will be taken up, which is, like, how do we conceive of of expression and what kinds of expressions are we interested in, and why might questions of labor be important in this moment? I think, like, she pointed to this, but also, like, I know that, students I speak to, not when I teach this, but when I teach, like, other kind of historical examples of, like, you know, the Ford Foundation and their experiments in scientific or, like, you know, the sort of Taylor experiments that they were involved in, that Grace Hong writes about in ruptures of American Capital.
Speaker 1:Like, I think that they're interested in the ways in which things are divided, as a way to sort of exploit their labor. So I'm hoping I can hear from, like, other young people who read this book and, like, let me know, like, what they're thinking about in terms of, like, how they imagine the world. I also saw in that review that she said she paid, like, full price. And I was like, oh my gosh. I wonder, like, reimburse this person.
Speaker 1:Like but also, like, why did City Lights, like, give her a discount?
Speaker 2:That's right. That's where she bought it. It's City Lights. I love that. It was so true.
Speaker 2:Worth every penny though. Oh. Worth every penny. So I don't I think it was worth it. I mean You know?
Speaker 1:But I I say this in the book and I mean it that, like, I really hope that it can prompt more research into, like, histories of collections. Maybe not just museums, but, like, how different archives are built. I did, like, a little bit of financial overview of the various, like, poetry archives in the US. Yep. But, I I think right now, like, as culture has once again becomes, like, this site of contestation as it always will Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I really am hoping that we can have, like, interconnected, like, material histories. I think that perhaps, like, configuring artists not as, like, an individual who's, like, attached to a patron, but, like, thinking about the community that this person is configured into.
Speaker 2:Well, which I think is really an important part that you you also talk about, which is we focus so much on the individual, and it sort of almost becomes like a sin. You know, like, the idea of sin or somehow as opposed to, like, there's a whole structure. Yes. That puts people in a position where they actually may not, I mean, have a choice. And also, sometimes the underlying realities aren't apparent.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Do you know what's going no one's sitting there and knows what the board meetings are are about. Right? No one knows how they set that up.
Speaker 1:I'm really hoping that there could be a history of how boards, 501c threes, like museums and other, like, arts organizations, literary organizations, like a historical charting of how they were, like, made. So I look at, like, The Frick Collection, but, like, who are the primary founders or board members of that collection? It's, all the robber barons.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:It's Rockefellers. Yes. Yep. It's Andrew Mellon. They write letters that say things like, I don't know anything about this painting, but I would like to have it.
Speaker 1:So let's let's get it.
Speaker 2:Which is which is so familiar to anyone who's had to deal with a collector in a contemporary art setting. I mean, not all of them, but you certainly do hear things like that still.
Speaker 1:I I think to this day, artists probably make up the minority of a Yeah. Of a board
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Of a artistic institution. Yeah. Because the thing that's prioritized is, like, financial immortality. Right? So, like, it's the fine well, I think that they might You
Speaker 2:just touched on it, though. Immortality. Right. I think That's the underlying part here. Right?
Speaker 1:I think that the they would say it's financial health.
Speaker 2:It's the
Speaker 1:financial health of the institution. But I often think about how, like okay, so if you stack the board with a group of people who have really bought into the moralism, the moral, like, messiah of capitalism that says, like, endless, immortal kind of, like, financial possibility for an art institution, then they might be making investments that actually undermine the very thing that the institution stands for, including, like, the environment.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So I I think that it would be really wonderful if, like, we could have, like, more histories of, like, well, why does the board look this way?
Speaker 2:That's right. Still building pyramids.
Speaker 1:We we still and I I would like to not move away from that question. I would like for instead of, like, having conversations around, like, individual artistic responsibility or, like, individual, like, responsibility, I would like, a history of board formations. Because I think there's something that happens when each and every single person who is not actually making the structural decisions that end up affecting everyone has to explain their decisions. Yeah. It almost makes it so that the the thing that is the foundation never gets touched upon.
Speaker 1:Then you get to, like, pick your favorite player, which I you know, there are artists that I really like Sure.
Speaker 2:And that
Speaker 1:I respect. But I
Speaker 2:And who sometimes make really bad decisions in my, in my opinion, You know? And that's fine. That's
Speaker 1:the way it works. But the way that they make decisions, I think that there's an overanalysis of them
Speaker 2:and an underanalysis of institutional knowledge. Opaque. Yes. No one is gonna give you access, do you know, to that level of transparency. And it's great that you have the papers, but I wonder how many of those papers are still being preserved because they know that those decisions are going to be scrutinized.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? So that also I I wonder about that.
Speaker 1:Like We will have to get creative.
Speaker 2:Like Well, we are we are going to.
Speaker 1:We we are going to. When we look at the 9 nineties, I think questions like what's the difference between the acquisitions budget versus the budget and the payment for the financial officers. I think, like, things like I think we will have to, like as they become better, and they always do, about, like, you know, destroying evidence or what, you know, the other things that happen. I think that there will be a way in which we can continue to ask questions by looking to the past, but also looking to the present and back and forth.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, this was wonderful.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Doug. I I really love this podcast so much. I listened, a few times to the Eli Valley.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was so fantastic.
Speaker 2:He's so great of me.
Speaker 1:And I learned so much, and I just like, I assigned your
Speaker 2:podcast and writing. Oh, I'm so kind.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then tomorrow, I listened to that.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. I mean, you talk about that case in here extensively. So in the photographs at Harvard and I mean, that story, I mean, just breaks my heart every time. And but you talk about it so, intelligently because, really, talk about artwork as property. Right?
Speaker 2:The photograph, then who gets to own it? Yeah. And, of course, as we know, law systems are built in a certain way to prioritize certain types of ownership.
Speaker 1:Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Do you know? And the racialization of that and who who gives consent. Yeah. And who can actually be seen as, you know, as who can whose identity can disappear in the room. Do you know?
Speaker 2:And I think that sometimes is also the issue.
Speaker 1:And that case is like it it's a fascinating case because it's like this question comes up by one of the judges, like, is the daguerreotype a photograph?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And if it's not a photograph, then should the whole case actually be decided differently? But also Harvard has digitized that image.
Speaker 2:That's right. And and it's been everywhere. And you can get it on Getty. You know? So those who don't know, of course, it's the case of Lanier family is trying to get the possession of daguerreotypes that were created by an, Harvard anthropologist in the 19th century on a on a slave plantation in the south of papa renti and his family.
Speaker 2:But at the time, they couldn't give consent as enslaved individuals. And so their enslaver was the person who gave consent to photograph them. And now the family would like possession back Right. Of these images.
Speaker 1:The photographs were, or the daguerreotypes were made to the continuation of chattel slavery.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So I think that there that all of the elements of that case and the the creation of the objects are something to be contended with.
Speaker 2:Right. And they're still but you talk about how contemporary artists like Carrie Mae Weems have sort of used them and reinvented them and expanded our understanding of them, as well as other artists. So I just wanna say thank you for that contribution. Thank you for your time, Kaye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for reading it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for this book. I'm gonna be rereading this, and, if I if I start teaching again, I will be assigning it, and it will be all this thing. But, you know and and I think and I just wanna be clear because I think, you know, when it comes to this field, sometimes people feel like they're just staking their flag. And I don't think you're staking a flag. I think what you're doing is you're trying to open up conversations, and and I think it really is generous what you did here.
Speaker 2:And and I hope people do expand and and challenge some ideas and perhaps find things in here that they've never thought about before. So I hope so. And I know they will. So thank you, Insongas.
Speaker 1:This is wonderful. I'm so this is so exciting. This is such a it was such an honor to be a guest, but also to be read so closely by you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. You can order The Politics of Collecting by Eunseong Kim from Duke University Press. This podcast is edited by our producer, Isabella Segalovich, and our membership is the main supporter of the show. So a big thank you to all the Hyperallergic members out there.
Speaker 2:I'm Hragh Bartanya, the editor in chief and cofounder of Hyperallergic. We'll see you next time.