By Tiffany Danielle Caesar
As I read the University of Louisville e-mail of daily reminders of events occurring, I noticed on Jan. 13, students could get in for free to the esteemed exhibit: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness at the Speed Museum.
The exhibit included paintings, furniture, utensils, and more items from the years of Plymouth Rock to the Gilded Age. As I walked through the rooms of historical artifacts and heard my boots echo, I felt primarily as if I was on an educational adventure by myself. There was something missing in this great exhibit from Yale University.
I witnessed action paintings of The Battle of Bunker’s Hill during the American Revolution.
Yet with one hand I counted four or five pictures of African slaves, and it was the same scarcity of images when it came to the Native Americans. Immediately, I eagerly searched for more images or objects that represented these two minority groups.
To my dismay, this exhibit which was supposed to, according to the pamphlets, “celebrate all of the creativity and diversity that has made our country”, did not. The word diversity was limited in its usage. The exhibit was full of Europocentric images that did not accurately pertain to the true realities of the period from Plymouth Rock to the Gilded Age. By not showing more images and objects of the Native Americans and African Slaves, the exhibit is incomplete.
Also the images of the African Slaves and Native Americans displayed a false happiness in order to de-emphasize a world of cruelty. I saw Indians happily playing lacrosse (in which they invented) and in pictures with upper class white men as if they were equal. The pain and suffering that the Indians encountered because of these foreigners was not even mentioned.
How come there was no tepee displayed to show how the Indians lived? Why was there no acknowledgement that because of the Indians help, the pilgrims were able to survive in a land unknown to them? When it came to the African slaves, I saw four images of men from the Amistad ship dressed decently as gentlemen. By the pictures, one would think they were pleased to come to the New World.
The unbearable treatment that caused the insurrection of the Amistad ship is not felt through the illustration. How come I did not see chattel? How come I did not see images of African slaves picking the cotton that began the wealth of the America’s? The exhibit was flawed, because it showed a fragmented history. If there is a major influence of the period missing like people (African slaves and Native Americans) it should be mentioned in the guide, for example, “The exhibit is not a full depiction of the time periods because of the lack of representation of African slaves and Native Americans…”.
Life and liberty was not guaranteed to everyone in the early development of America, then according to this exhibit whose pursuit of happiness was it?
