AA Unit 2: Vessels: The Visual and Material Culture of Slavery

Description of a Slave Ship

Dave (David Drake), Storage jar,

Unrecorded Edgefield District potter, Face jug

Unrecorded Edgefield District potter, Face jug, South Carolina, c. 1850–80.

Fred Wilson, Metalwork 1793–1880, from Mining the Museum

Romuald Hazoumè, La Bouche du Roi, 1997–2005.

The vessel

A container such as a jar, pot, or ship. It works both literally and as a metaphor for what holds, carries, and transports.

The Black Atlantic

Paul Gilroy’s concept (1993) of the Atlantic as a shared cultural space linking Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe

The slave ship as icon

The image of the slave ship, especially the Brookes diagram (1788), became a powerful symbol of the slave trade’s horror

Institutional critique

Art that questions museums and other institutions themselves: what they collect, how they display it, whose stories they tell, and whose they leave out.

Juxtaposition as critique

Placing unrelated objects side by side so their relationship exposes a hidden truth.

The archive

The records and collections an institution or society keeps, such as documents, objects, and images.

Abolitionist print culture

Prints, pamphlets, broadsides, and images made and widely circulated to build public opposition to slavery.

Anonymity and attribution:

Most objects made by enslaved and African artists went unrecorded, labeled only by region or “unknown maker.” Attribution means identifying and crediting the actual maker, which restores individual authorship

Inscription

Writing carved, incised, or marked onto an object.