Adrienne Childs
2003-2004 Graduate Fellow

Adrienne Childs is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland. She obtained her BA from Georgetown University in 1982 and an MBA from Howard University in 1985. After several years as a museum administrator and curator, she returned to academia to pursue graduate studies at the University of Maryland where she earned an M.A. in art history in 2000. Her research centers on the intersection of race and exoticism in nineteenth-century European art as well as African American art. Recent exhibitions curated by Ms. Childs include Echoes: The Art of David C. Driskell and Successions: Prints by African American Artists in the Jean and Robert Steele Collection.

Fellow's Project Description
The Black Exotic: Representing Africans in French Orientalist Art,
1850-1900

My year at the Driskell Center will be devoted to writing my dissertation entitled The Black Exotic: Representing Africans in French Orientalist Art 1850-1900. This project has grown out of a long-standing interest in the nexus of race and exoticism in French art. My work in this area builds upon Edward Said’s notion that Orientalism was a discourse of power and played a part in the larger systems of authority and control that Western powers held over the Middle East and Africa in the nineteenth century. This exploration will chart the social, cultural and political implications inherent in the representation of Africa and Africans in French painting and sculpture within the context of the very popular genre of Orientalist art in nineteenth-century France.

This line of inquiry calls for an understanding of the complex nature of the African Diaspora’s impact on the history of Western art. It is well understood that the historical and cultural legacy of African diasporic peoples is embodied in their arts and letters. I propose that this history is not limited to the investigation of the production of peoples of African descent, but must also take into account the powerful influence wielded by the manner in which they are represented by others. One of the challenges of theorizing the arts of the African Diaspora is grappling with the matrix of interrelationships surrounding representing self and being represented. This dissertation, while taking into consideration the role played by Europeans in the history of the African Diaspora through the slave trade, travel and exploration, and colonial pursuits, attempts to unravel how European ideas regarding these relationships are negotiated through the representation of the “exotic” black. It is my desire to go beyond the notion that tropes of blacks are merely “racist,” and give a more nuanced understanding of how stereotypes create and conduct meaning. This study not only enhances our understanding of a historical phenomenon, but also gives us the tools to investigate the misguided tropes that artists of the African Diaspora are still attempting to understand and dismantle. Broadening conventional boundaries of the Diaspora narrative, my project endeavors to offer new insights into the complex dynamics of identity and representation.