True, Haiti has suffered earthquakes and hurricanes, colonialism and other insults. Now, as a sort of antidote, comes an exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas designed to illuminate the island nation’s beauty and its relations with its continental neighbor to the north. The exhibition “The Ties That Bind: Haiti, the United States and the Art of Ulrick Jean-Pierre in Comparative Perspective” runs through Jan. 7.
Cécile Accilien, associate professor and acting chair of the Department of African & African-American Studies, has been working with Cassandra Mesick Braun, the Spencer museum’s curator of global & indigenous art, for nearly two years on the exhibition. Accilien also directs KU’s Institute of Haitian Studies, established in 1992, and is associate director of the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.
Accilien said she was made aware that the Spencer had “a nice collection of Haitian art” soon after she arrived on campus in 2015. That was four years after native Kansan Mary Lou Vansant Hughes gifted nearly 100 works by contemporary Haitian artists to the museum. Hughes became a collector while her husband, an American diplomatic service officer, was stationed in Port-au-Prince during the 1970s.
“The collection is incredible. You have some of the most important contemporary Haitian artists represented,” Accilien said.
“The Ties That Bind” offers a chance to stimulate a public conversation about the issues they raise. The exhibition pairs selections from the museum’s permanent collection with 12 paintings, many of them larger-than-life-size portraits of Haitian historical figures, by Haitian native Jean-Pierre.
At Accilien’s request, Jean-Pierre loaned the Spencer Museum eight new paintings, including a portrait of legendary New Orleans Creole “voodoo queen” Marie Laveau that is the 2018-19 Common Work of Art, and which he made especially for the exhibition. The other four Jean-Pierre paintings on view are loans from private collectors
She said showing works that portray Haitians and Caribbean people in all of their complexity helps viewers “to go against stereotypes.”
“They have stereotypes of Haiti being only linked to poverty, disaster, Vodou,” Accilien said. “It’s important for them to see these positive images that go against the stereotypical images of these places. … I think art, music and film provide spaces to have these complex conversations.”
