Beginning September 21, for the first time in months, staff at the Fleming Museum will be greeting visitors to the building.
It’s another sign of a return to normalcy after more than a year of living in a pandemic. But for the Fleming, it’s also an opportunity to show how the institution is reimagining itself in light of events over the past 18 months, including the George Floyd protests and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Assistant Director Chris Dissinger, who oversees the museum’s outreach and visitor engagement services, says, “We’ve used the time to present work, most of it already in the museum’s collection, in ways that we hope will create conversations about important issues.”
The result is an exhibition called “The Fleming Reimagined: Confronting Institutional Racism and Historical Oppression” on view until December 10. Unlike traditional visiting exhibits, which are temporary and often inhabit a particular corner of the museum, Dissinger describes the exhibition as unbound by physical space or finite timeframes.
Dissinger notes that many art and history museums are currently in the process of squarely facing their colonial past. “What’s commonplace is that a lot of museums will host an exhibition of a BIPOC artist. We felt like we could do that, but it would only be a temporary and superficial response.”
The first-floor East Gallery now features “The Learning Studio,” which introduces visitors to the work of BIPOC artists, accompanied by labels that rely less on scholarly commentary and more on gut-level reactions written by museum staff members, or by the artists themselves.
The rear area of the studio makes space for ̽̽ classes to examine artworks. When classes are not in session, Fleming staff members are available to share these treasures from the collection that are normally not on view.
“Absence” represents a historical reckoning for the museum. Visitors may notice in the European and American gallery a mid-1700s portrait of Anne Isted painted by renowned artist Thomas Hudson is no longer on display. Dissinger points to the original label extolling Isted as a self-made woman who used some of her fortune to have her portrait painted.
“What the label didn’t point our was that her fortune came from enslavement,” he said.
New labels presenting these backstories occupy the empty spaces left by the missing portraits. “She (Isted) inherited, and then bequeathed to her nephew, a 1,100-acre plantation in Jamaica,” writes Fleming curator Andrea Rosen in the new Isted label. “This gallery, a gallery full of portraits like Isted’s, full of celebratory depictions of white Europeans and Euro-Americans whose wealth and status were built on the backs of people of color, reinforces white supremacy.”
Eventually, paintings by a wider diversity of artists will be chosen to hang in the empty spaces.
A 2020 Fleming exhibit DzԾԲ” was a first step in describing how art can be used to tell stories about feelings and experiences in reaction to contemporary turmoil surrounding issues of race. “The Storytelling Salon” in the Wolcott Gallery includes impressions on what staff learned over the past 18 months.
The space also features fresh works by BIPOC artists arranged around a ring of comfortable chairs, creating an inviting space for open discussion.
“Building trust by acknowledging those past failures and making space for true collaboration with new voices is the first building block to a reimagined Fleming Museum,” Dissinger said. Admission to the museum is free of charge.
Learn more about Fleming Museum open hours and COVID-19 visitor protocols for fall 2021.