Art historical museum curation in contemporary practice can be accurately described as an art of its own. These days, it is often an act of radical retrieval that returns lost, or nearly lost, or never-before discovered artifacts and previously obscure artists from oppressed or marginalized social backgrounds to public consciousness. “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina,” an exhaustively researched exhibition on view from August 26, 2023, to January 7, 2024, at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, represents such a reclamation.

The exhibition tells a complex story of industrial slavery in the potteries of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, before the Civil War. In addition to over 60 objects, both from antebellum craftsmen and contemporary artists working in clay, the exhibition is notable for its empathetic analysis of the social and economic currents that inform what we remember in art history and how we remember it. “Hear Me Now” is remarkable for its inclusive retelling of that history, with its many interlocking plots and players, in spite of inevitable gaps in the historical record. The installation features unusually informative wall signage as well as a comprehensive audio tour.

Industrial Scale Slavery in the South

Beginning in the 1840’s, Edgefield stoneware produced by a large population of enslaved Black potters gained a reputation for affordability and durability throughout the South. Edgefield County was a well-known center for industrial scale production of storage jars using the local clay and expertise appropriated from thousands of largely anonymous African craftsmen. The utilitarian vessels were produced in various sizes, the lower part of the pots begun on the potter’s wheel and then finished around the top using the coil method. Firing took place in enormous hillside kilns that extended underground for more than 100 feet. Thousands of pots were produced each year; evidence of the scale and scope of the industry remains visible in the vast piles of broken shards that remain. One of the co-curators of the exhibition, Jason Young of the University of Michigan, recounts his emotionally fraught reaction to seeing the spoiled remains from thousands of hours of slave labor:

On a recent trip to Edgefield, I visited some of the pottery sites that date back to the nineteenth century…I felt myself traversing a wasteland, a vast open grave littered with ceramic bones.

I am frustrated that despite my best efforts I am utterly failing to maintain the solemn silence that I deem appropriate when in the presence of the dead. With every step, bits and pieces of ceramic crack, crunching underfoot.

The names of many of the producers of these stoneware vessels have been lost, a fact emphasized by the use of printed blanks in the wall signage. Throughout descriptions of the artisans who worked in Old Edgefield, the show’s curators are acutely aware not only of what remains of their production, but of what has been lost. Victoria Reed, Curator of Provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, describes the ethical dilemma of owning and showing work by anonymous artists produced under duress:

A break in the chain of ownership occurs when a work of art changes hands without the consent of its owner or maker. These breaks can take the form of theft, looting, forced sales, and transfers under coercion or without compensation… Exhibiting these works of art prompts us to consider their rightful ownership and value—and the importance of those who carry the artist’s legacy today.

(Left) Dave (later recorded as David Drake) (American, ca. 1801–1870s), Storage Jar, 1859. Alkaline-glazed stoneware. National Gallery of Art. (Right) Unrecorded Edgefield District potter (American), Face Jug, Old Edgefield District Pottery. Possibly Davies Firebrick Works, ca. 1850–80. Photos: K.A. Letts.

 

The preserved identity of “Dave,”

One of the enslaved potters from Old Edgefield, however, managed to retain his creative identity. The potter and poet “Dave,” was active in Edgefield from 1848-1867, taking the name David Drake after his emancipation. He was notable for the simple fact that he was literate, illegal among slaves at that time. In spite of this, Dave made a point of signing his work and seems to have done so with impunity. In addition to his signature, he composed cryptic and often witty poem fragments and wrote them on his monumental wares.

nineteen days before Christmas –Eve—

Lots of people after its over,

How they will greave,

Lm December 6, 1858/Dave

When Dave made this elegant cursive inscription on one of his ceramic vessels in 1858, it was an act of subversive humor and defiance that reaches out to the sensibilities of a contemporary audience. His verse juxtaposes the joy of Christmas with the covert acknowledgement that slaves were frequently sold and transported on New Year’s Day. (The “Lm” in the inscription refers to his enslaver, Lewis Miles.)

The Wanderer

Tucked within the exhibition is a show-within-a-show that tells the story of a slave ship and the African captives it carried. Though the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808, the surreptitious smuggling of African captives for sale in the New World continued. The Wanderer was purchased and outfitted for that purpose by a trafficker named Charles Lamar in the mid-1850s. 170 of the 400 prisoners he transported ended up in Edgefield County and some were put to work in the potteries. Six photographs of the African captives from this shipment are displayed on the gallery walls. Unlike the slaves who had been imported earlier, several retained their African names until emancipation. It was at this time that the unique expressive face jugs of the region began to appear, and it is thought that the captives from The Wanderer were responsible. The curators have added a number of African artifacts from the geographic location where the captives were taken. They illustrate the cultural continuities of themes and forms from Africa to the American South, including a n’kisi figure as well as some smaller artifacts. The face jugs, which were produced by the Africans for their own use, are a high point of “Hear Me Now.” Expressive, individualistic, and emotionally resonant, these clay characters stare, grimace, and grin, and may represent shamanistic practices brought from Africa by the captives.

Contemporary Black Artists Respond

As part of this reclamation project, the curators of “Hear Me Now” have invited several prominent and emerging Black artists to respond to the historical works in the show. They have contributed artworks that address the history of the artifacts and their creators and, in turn, their significance for a contemporary audience. Simone Leigh, the 2022 United States representative in the Venice Biennale—and the first Black woman to be so honored—has created Large Jug, an enormous white ceramic vessel that repeats the monumental scale of many of the storage jars in the gallery but adds private significance in the form of applied cowrie shells, a visual theme she repeats often in her work. Its silent presence, sited in the center of the installation, contributes a compelling focal point for many of the themes in the show. Adebunmi Gbadebo, a young Black artist whose work specifically centers around materials that recall historic oppression, such as clay from southern plantations and human hair from living descendants of the diaspora, offers a head-sized clay egg, from which extends a spray of Black hair. Woody De Othello’s grassy-green vessel is a more straightforward take on the face jugs in the exhibition.

Insert 6-hearmennow-Woody-De-Othello web here.

The contemporary artists in “Hear Me Now” go some way in illuminating the relevance of the Old Edgefield potters to art as we understand and practice it now. While acknowledging the forced circumstances of their work, they celebrate their resilience and their resistance to erasure.

Concatenation

What is a modern audience to make of this collection of utilitarian artifacts produced by coercion, yet impressive in their skillful production and their undeniable—though covert—flourishes of creativity in execution? David Drake’s first known signed jug from 1834 suggests an answer. Inscribed on the vessel is the word “concatenation,” the linking of disparate ideas, things or events which, when taken together, form a new meaning.

Vincent Brown, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Professor of American History, eloquently sums up this alchemical process:

To grasp the significance of such grand creations by such humble servants, we need a delicate grip. A lighter touch might bring insights on how labor meant to degrade human beings could, paradoxically, and against the will of enslavers and oppressors, become a source of self-esteem and public admiration. I can hear a message in these pots now. They speak to me across time, saying something refined works rarely speak to. It’s kind of an inside joke: Black peoples’ endurance is our transcendence. That is the basis of our survival and our art.

“Hear Me Now” was curated by Jason Young, Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Adrienne Spinozzi, Associate Curator, American Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Ethan Lasser, John Moors Cabot Chair, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition will close at the UMMA on Jan. 7, and will be on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta Georgia, from February 16 to May 12, 2024.

 

K.A. Letts is the Detroit editor of the New Art Examiner, a working artist (kalettsart.com) and art blogger (rustbeltarts.com). She has shown her paintings and drawings in galleries and museums in Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, and New York. She writes frequently about art in the Detroit area.