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The Expert Guest for "BUTTON" was TK Smith
The smallest thing we've looked at so far this season has a big story to tell. Little enough to fit in the palm of your hand, it transports us from Caribbean battlefields to a prison in France. Along the way, it tells us about the enduring power of portraits--especially for Black revolutionaries like the one who allegedly wore this BUTTON.
TK Smith is an award-winning writer, curator, and cultural historian focused on modern and contemporary art. He has served as Curator of Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora at Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum and as Assistant Curator at the Barnes Foundation. His research examines performance and identity in Black portraiture, asking how representation both reflects and constructs power. Smith is currently working in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware on his dissertation, “Granite, Power, and Piss: The Shifting Position of a Confederate Symbol.”
For more on TK Smith visit his website.
For more on the button:
Button, attributed to Agostino Brunias, Italian, ca. 1730-1796, Cooper Hewitt
Other things:
Haitian Winter Olympics Uniforms
Image 1 of Toussaint Louverture
Image 2 of Toussaint Louverture
Portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama
Photographs of Frederick Douglass
Image of Sojourner Truth
Thoms J. Price, "Grounded in the Stars"
Further Reading:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-mystery-in-miniature-175686099/
https://www.journal18.org/issue21/finding-william-lee-a-black-founder-in-early-american-portraiture/
See also Trouillot’s Silencing the Past and work of scholars Marlene Daut, Laurent Dubois, Julia Gaffield, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Ashli White.
