Wendel A. White: “Schools for the Colored” & “Manifest”
April 5 – May 31, 2025
Schools for the Colored, carefully selected from a larger portfolio of the same name, looks at the physical structures – both standing and demolished – of segregated schools of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In these black and white prints, the buildings that still exist are photographically represented, and the schools that have been destroyed are depicted by black silhouettes of those structures, nodding to the way space can hold invisible memories of the past. While the former schools and silhouettes are sharply in focus, the surrounding landscape is masked as if faded, a reference to W. E. B. DuBois’ literary metaphor (from The Souls of Black Folk) of the veil as a social barrier.
“I often remind people that history explains everything. If one wants to know the basis of a particular condition, one need only look to history for a clear explanation. And so it is with the disparity in the allocation of educational resources between white and Black students in America’s schools.” -Dawoud Bey (from Excavating Histories: Wendel White’s Schools for the Colored, Nueva Luz)
On view in our south gallery is a selection from White’s ongoing project Manifest. Here we see archival objects from various public collections throughout the U.S. photographed in rich color on uniformly black backgrounds. The objects included are examinations of material culture – books, daguerreotypes, lunchboxes, tape recorders. Some of these items hold great significance, while others are simply quotidian representations of daily life in the history of the African American community. While the selections for this exhibition shift focus to the 20th century, the histories of slavery, abolition, and the U.S. Civil War are a few of the narratives present in the project at large. White maintains a keen interest in the residual power of the past to inhabit material remains, and the ability of objects to transcend lives, centuries, and millennia, suggesting a remarkable mechanism for folding time, bringing the past and the present into a shared space that is uniquely suited to artistic exploration.
Schools for the Colored
Manifest
