Janine Yorimoto Boldt: What is re:mancipation?

From its earliest days, viewers saw problems with Thomas Ball's Emancipation Group sculpture. Janine Yorimoto Boldt, the Chazen's associate curator of American art, discusses the sculpture's history, versions, iconography, and evolving interpretations with host Gianofer Fields.

Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.

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Transcript

Gianofer Fields  0:09 
Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. The most striking element of the Emancipation Group sculpture is President Abraham Lincoln standing over what appears to be a man breaking the shackles of slavery. However, according to Dr. Janine Yorimoto Boldt, a closer look reveals even more detail.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  0:36 
I'm Janine Yorimoto Boldt, I'm the Associate Curator of American art at the Chazen Museum of Art, and re:mancipation to me, is sort of the exploration of what freedom means or emancipation means because it means different things to different people. People experience it differently. And people have very different experiences of emancipation, both historically and in the contemporary world. And so re:mancipation as a word sort of gets at this idea of sort of rethinking or remixing what what freedom and emancipation is. And the project allows us to do that around one particular piece that claims to represent emancipation.

Gianofer Fields  1:18 
Talk to me, Janine, about your involvement in the project.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  1:22 
My role has been to do a lot of historical research around the sculpture, its art, historical and historical context, and to put together a lot of material on interpreting the sculpture. So how do we interpret the iconography both in today's world and it's also historically, what did Ball mean when he put this piece together? And then tracing the history of the sculpture, and it's multiple versions. So trying to track down as many versions as I could in the bronze and marble. What museums are they in? Are there any private collections, and putting all that information together and sharing it with our collaborators. I have also been doing a lot of writing and preparation for the exhibition.

Gianofer Fields  2:12 
I thought Janine, that when you see a sculpture and you see it in place, where it's going to live when it occupies a space, whether it be in the gallery or outside, it's easy to think that that's the one sculpture. I know from just my background, that it takes many different forms and maquettes, which are small studies to get to the final piece, but knowing that there are different versions out there in the world, I was kind of surprised. So talk to me about those different versions that are out there of the Emancipation Group.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  2:46 
Sure. Well, Ball initially would have created a plaster version in his studio in Florence, Italy. And I believe that the first composition he developed,  showed Lincoln standing over a kneeling freedman, but leaning on a American sort of shield and holding a laurel victory wreath over a stack of books and the emancipation scroll. And this was produced in bronze. So it's cast in bronze in Italy. There are at least a few versions of them out there. And then I believe he made some changes to the composition. We don't know exactly why. But he replaced the shield and stack of books with a column covered in sort of patriotic or national symbols. And the emancipation group, or I'm sorry, the Emancipation Proclamation scroll, and one book now appears sitting on top of that column. And I believe that this is the second version that he produced. And this one he produced in marble, so he had stone cutters carved out of white Italian marble. And this is a version then that William Greenleaf Eliot, who was part of the Western Sanitary Commission and the committee for erecting the Freedmen's monument in Washington, DC. He saw this version of the composition in Ball's Florence studio. And this version, then became the basis for the monumental bronze version of the sculpture that appeared first in Washington, DC and then a few years later, another version was made for Boston. And this version is very, very similar, with the changes only coming in the figure of the freed man himself. So Elliott, and the Western Sanitary Commission, asked Paul to make two important changes to the composition before it was casted monumental bronze. One change was that they wanted the freed man to be modeled after a real person. So they gave him a photograph of a man named Archer Alexander, who was a formerly enslaved man from Missouri, and they wanted Ball to create sort of a portrait of this man, because they said that that would represent truth better. Of course, Archer Alexander was actually not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, he was a self-emancipated man who ran away from his enslaver because he lived in Missouri and the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free anyone in Union held territory in Missouri. The second change was they asked him to make the wrist position differently. So the the original sort of the first bronze, the first marble, that for kneeling freed man's wrist is sort of slack. And he's sort of making a hand gesture that looks like a Christian blessing. In the monument version, they asked him to, they asked Ball to change the wrist position so that it looks like the free man was assisting and breaking his own chains. So his fist, so his hand is now in a fist, and it's sort of raised up. And they did this because they wanted the free man to have a little more agency in the sculpture, which is an interesting sort of request, because it shows that this committee of white men in the 19th century already saw the sort of the problematic issues in the composition that Ball created in the first marble and bronze of not giving the free man any agency.

Gianofer Fields  6:04 
It's also fascinating to me, Janine, that idea that change follows the money, like these rich people can afford to say, okay, we're going to redo it, and we're going to make these changes. So it's this idea of, it's not only filtered through Ball's lens, but also through the lens of people who are funding the sculpture.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  6:26 
Yeah, absolutely. And the interesting thing is, most almost all of the money for the monument actually was donated by African Americans. An African American woman named Charlotte Scott, who was formerly enslaved, started the collection, she donated $5. And the money ended up with the Western Sanitary Commission. And then they went around, and they started a national campaign to get African Americans to donate money. And so African Americans actually funded the monument, they collected over $16,000. And then the federal government donated like, basically the base for the sculpture in DC. But the men in charge of handling the money and the committee, were all white men who were part of the Western Sanitary Commission. So with the African Americans had funded it, it was white men who are in control of their money.

Gianofer Fields  7:12 
I really want to get into some of the symbols of the sculpture because we usually we approach things from the front. Take me around the sculpture, and some of the symbols that we'll see should be ventured towards the back of it.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  7:24 
So when you walk around the back of the sculpture, there's actually a lot of small details in the back. So from the front, you can see a sort of a shrouded post, well, when you walk around the back of the sculpture, you learn that that pose is actually sort of a chopped down whipping post, and it has sort of the chains attached to it still, and it has been shrouded. And then at the base of the whipping post, is a cat of nine tails, whip, and broken ball and chain, both of which symbolizes sort of the ends of slavery and the end of corporal punishment associated with slavery. And there's also a rose vine growing up the back of the whipping post, which symbolizes sort of a new life for new beginnings after emancipation. And then right behind Abraham Lincoln, is a bleeding heart, sort of just on its own. And it's sort of an odd inclusion, but it represents sort of compassion. So the artist seems to be suggesting that, you know, compassion is a trade associated with Lincoln, that Lincoln had been showing compassion to the enslaved population of the United States.

Gianofer Fields  8:29 
And Janine talk to me about, with knowing what you know about this culture, and how much work you've done on this sculpture, and now being around the MASK Consortium and working with the group and giving public public lectures, I guess, you could say, public lectures on the sculpture, how has, or have your thoughts and opinions, or your idea about the sculpture changed, as you get further and further and further into the re:mancipation Project?

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  9:00 
Yeah, well, I've just been so excited by all the artistic responses to the piece. Sort of the work I do is very traditionally art historical, and breaking down the iconography and the history and to see this piece really brought to life and how it continues to affect viewers. It's really fascinating. And to be able to watch people respond to the sculpture in real life and sort of have conversations with it artistically has been really eye-opening, and really helps bring home the idea that these historical pieces continue to live in the present moment, and to be really impactful for people today. And in giving multiple presentations and talking about the sculpture and inviting people to look closely at it. They've encouraged me to see this new things in the sculpture and ask new questions, right, asking new questions about how all the elements fit together. Why do they fit together certain ways? And then I've been asked some really interesting questions like the role of religion and government, for instance, because the quote at the base of the sculpture includes a quote for emancipation that invokes God's name. There's some sort of Christian symbolism with a bleeding heart, and the hand gesture the newly freed man is making. And that was not really a question I had thought about. And I still don't know the answer, but just thinking about all these different avenues and ways to interpret the piece and thinking about the many different influences in the sculpture, but also in the Emancipation Proclamation itself, and in this moment of late 19th century American history.

Gianofer Fields  10:35 
So in your relationship with the sculpture, and in your relationship with the MASK Consortium in the re:mancipation project, what would be your response, this moment, to the sculpture? If you had to respond to it, and this could take, you can recreate a Sims world, whatever your response could be to this, what would it be?

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  10:56 
Oh, man, that's a great question. And actually not one I have been thinking about. My response would be I would really love to see this sculpture sort of inverted. We're so used to seeing sculptures of men like President Lincoln, and elevated positions, and I would love to see a sculpture where he perhaps kneels down in forgiveness, asking for forgiveness from a person of color, whether it be it, you know, an African American figure, or a Native American figure given Lincoln's long history with indigenous dispossession and the massacre of indigenous Americans during his tenure as president, and sort of invert the sculpture. So we have a kneeling Lincoln sort of, in front of, you know, a standing person of color or people of color, sort of rethinking these historic relationships, in sculpture, and then in historical life and just thinking about, how can we reimagine and use art to sort of actually start thinking about reconciliation issues.

Gianofer Fields  12:11 
And I want white people to pay for it.

Janine Yorimoto Boldt  12:16 
Absolutely, with a commission of all people of color, making the sculpture, right, the opposite of what happened with the Emancipation Group monument.

Gianofer Fields  12:28  
You've been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. Our guest, Dr. Janine Yorimoto Boldt, is the associate curator of American art at UW-Madison's Chazen Museum of Art. Meet Me at the Chazen is a production of the Chazen Museum of Art on the campus of UW-Madison, in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information about the museum, its collections and exhibitions, visit chazen.wisc.edu. I'm your host Gianofer Fields. Thanks for listening.