SC Connecticut News

A new public art project commissioned by the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) aims to address issues of racial bias and historical memory in museum collections. The project features a billboard titled “Composition in Black and Brown I,” created by Los Angeles-based artist Ken Gonzales-Day. The billboard, which showcases a photographic collage of portrait busts and other sculptures from the YCBA and Yale Peabody Museum, will be on display near exit 44 on I-95 North in New Haven through October.

The artwork is part of Gonzales-Day's ongoing series "Profiled," where he photographs objects from various institutions worldwide to explore how racial bias shapes representation in museums. A slightly altered version of the artwork, “Composition in Black and Brown II,” will be displayed on vinyl through December at the YCBA’s Lower Court.

Both versions of the artwork center around two sculptures: “Bust of a Man,” a portrait of an unknown Black sitter made around 1758 from black limestone in the studio of British sculptor Francis Harwood, and “Stone Statue of a Young Man,” a Mexica figure carved between 1350 and 1521 C.E., acquired by the Peabody Museum in 1881. Surrounding these central figures are clusters of white-marble neoclassical portrait busts against a sky-blue background.

Gonzales-Day explained that his goal is not to critique either museum but to engage with questions about representation. He aims to help museums consider how they represent people who have been excluded from historical records. “My goal is to create a better institution where I can find a place… maybe not me, but maybe people after me,” Gonzales-Day said during an artist’s talk with Martina Droth, YCBA’s deputy director and chief curator.

In accepting the commission, Gonzales-Day noted that he had wanted to photograph the Harwood bust since 2008 when he photographed another version housed at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. His photographs highlight differences between the two sculptures, emphasizing details that reveal individual characteristics.

Gonzales-Day also explored the Peabody’s collection for representations related to his own racial heritage, asking, “where are the Latinos in the collections?” He decided that the Mexica sculpture would represent "Brown" in his compositions.

Essays accompanying Gonzales-Day's project provide updated information on both sculptures. Brooke Luokkala clarifies previous misidentifications regarding the Mexica statue while Edward Town speculates on why Harwood’s studio was commissioned to produce a bust of a Black man.

Town states that while Harwood's work may have served to normalize Britain’s exploitation of Africans for its eighteenth-century audiences by linking it to antiquity, further archival research is needed for definitive conclusions.