Philadelphia — Captivated by iconic Cézanne, Matisse, and Seurat paintings, most visitors Barnes Foundation Overlooking African sculptures.yet Collection founder Albert C. Burns, they were central. He began buying African sculptures in 1922, the year he founded the foundation. This is because of his influence on Picasso, Modigliani and many other French artists he supported. In 1923 he wrote to a dealer in Paris: “When the foundation is established, black art will always be placed among the great artistic expressions.
Burns believed that viewing African masterpieces would also advance a purpose he so passionately promoted along with contemporary art: the advancement of African Americans in society. As a testament to his commitment, African sculpture was the subject of the first book published by the foundation, and at the entrance of the original museum in the Philadelphia suburb of Merrion, modeled after the collection’s African works. It featured tile and terracotta designs.
But the sponsorship of black art by white billionaires was and still is complicated. The acquisition of cultural relics from conquered or impoverished societies raises ethical questions. What role does African sculpture play when it is removed from the context in which it worked? And who does it benefit?
Commissioned by Barnes to mark the foundation’s centenary, black British artist Isaac Julien has created a five-screen black-and-white film installation. “Once again… (Statues Never Die)” Seeing African art places at Barnes and other Western museums.
In two adjacent galleries, he complemented the film with a sculptural show featuring eight African artworks moved from Burns’ usual upstairs perch. richmond barte (1901-1989), prominent artist of the Harlem Renaissance, and five contemporary works, Matthew Angelo Harrison A cut-up of the African Tourist Trade Sculpture, embalmed with polyurethane resin and housed in an aluminum-framed glass case.
Julian’s movie hero Alan RockAfrican-American writer, critic, and teacher recognized as the intellectual father of the Harlem Renaissance. Through Barnes, Locke had his first exposure to African sculptural masterpieces. Locke granted Burns access to black writers and artists. Julian explores both the real working relationships and antagonisms between these strong-willed men. Each was educated, but they did not trust each other. In a personal sense, their exchange encapsulates the sensitivity and injustice surrounding the adoption of black African art by the dominant white culture and the struggle for black Americans to claim and use that heritage as their own. was
“This is what I call the poetics of redemption. It’s something I try to explore in my work,” Julian said in a telephone interview from London. “The contemporaneous debates we have today were happening 50 years ago, if not earlier. I think that’s really interesting.”
Unbeknownst to most viewers, Once Again … (Statues Never Die) is a semi-sequel to two films. “Even the statue dies” A 1953 short story by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais. He ruminates on the removal of African art to Western museums by imperialists who corrupted colonial cultures and peoples. and Julian’s breakthrough film, “Looking for Langston” He calls it a “meditation” on the ambiguous and queer identity of poet Langston Hughes. Rock, casually but undeniably gay, pursued young Hughes romantically. In “Once Again… (Statues Never Die),” Julianne is gay in Harlem, staged for “Looking for Langston,” with footage of his ball and Hughes’ famous line, “What happens to postponed dreams?” Incorporates previously used music settings. ?”
In “Once Again … (Statues Never Die),” queer black artist Julian gazes with a keen curiosity at Rock’s friendship with a sporadically sexual relationship with young African-American sculptor Barte. point the The film incorporates some archival footage, but relies primarily on scenes performed by the actors playing Rock, Barte, and Burns. When projecting the filmized records of Locke and Barthe, the reproduction is often very accurate, as the actors replicate the original positions and expressions while smiling and examining Barthe’s art.
One of Barthe’s major works, The Male Torso, is a nude that deviates from Greco-Roman ideals in search of an alternative black archetype. Jeffrey C. Stewart writes in his authoritative Rock biography: “New Negro” “Sculpture Visualizing New Black Masculinity” “Slimmer, slender, svelte” and “a symbol of black homosexual desire.” A naked model in the film mysteriously fits the sculpture.
But in the 30-minute film, the question of what it was like for black gay men like Locke to live in America in the first half of the 20th century explored how African art was moved to museums in the West. It meshes awkwardly with the issues surrounding “Once Again … (Statues Never Die)” features a rock reenactment scene and a fictional character that Julian describes as a “second protagonist”. A tall African female curator first appears in scenes filmed in the anthropological and archaeological Pit River. At the Oxford Museum, she testifies to the scars of a civilization deprived of its cultural treasures.
Towards the end of the film, historical photographs from the 1897 British raiding expedition, which destroyed Benin City in what is now Nigeria and brought a heap of bronze and brass masterpieces to the British Museum, are taken from the diary of the expedition. Accompanied by an excerpt. Chief of Staff.Includes images of Julian “You hide me” A 1970 documentary filmed in the basement of the British Museum in 1970 by a Ghanaian filmmaker Nii Kwate Wu It follows a young black man and woman unpacking African artifacts stored in wooden crates.
These scenes amplify Julian’s theme of a disturbing journey into the Western realm of African art, but a reenactment of the scene in which Locke gazes affectionately at the sleeping Barthet is the ‘Waiting for Langston’. It feels like an outtake from .
In an interview, Julian accused Burns of limiting his support of black art to works from African civilizations and not collecting contemporary African-American works. was purchased and exhibited.)
“A person like Barnes was not interested in Richmond Barthe’s sculptures. “Why aren’t people familiar with the work of Richmond Barte? He didn’t do much work, but he was an important African-American artist. Is there something questionable about the reason why they were disavowed?” Even today, Julian says, homosexuality remains a sensitive subject for many African-American art historians. I was.
But Barnes ignored Barte for another reason. Burns favored cutting-edge modernism. Neither a folk artist nor a Cubist, Barthe was closer in style to Rodin than Jacques Lipschitz, Alexander Archipenko, and other sculptors in Barnes’ collection. But for Locke, the greatest importance of African art was its power to revitalize the current flowering of black consciousness. There is a possibility
Unlike the British Raiders of Benin, Burns did not burn down the city to obtain the sculpture. Yet his laudable acquisition of African art, pried from the society that nurtured it, continued a process that began with the shipment of Benin bronzes to the British Museum at the end of the 19th century. Addressing these issues, Julien’s installations spotlight Burns’s treasure trove of African art and the long shadows it casts.
Isaac Julian: Statues Never Die
Through September 4, The Burns Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA. 215.278.7000; barnesfoundation.org.
