{"product_id":"mounting-frustration-susan-e-cahan-9780822358978","title":"Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power","description":"Prior to 1967 fewer than a dozen museum exhibitions had featured the work of African American artists. And by the time the civil rights movement reached the American art museum, it had already crested: the first public demonstrations to integrate museums occurred in late 1968, twenty years after the desegregation of the military and fourteen years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. In \u003ci\u003eMounting Frustration\u003c\/i\u003e Susan E. Cahan investigates the strategies African American artists and museum professionals employed as they wrangled over access to and the direction of New York City's elite museums. Drawing on numerous interviews with artists and analyses of internal museum documents, Cahan gives a detailed and at times surprising picture of the institutional and social forces that both drove and inhibited racial justice in New York's museums. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Cahan focuses on high-profile and wildly contested exhibitions that attempted to integrate African American culture and art into museums, each of which ignited debate, dissension, and protest. The Metropolitan Museum's 1969 exhibition \u003ci\u003eHarlem on My Mind\u003c\/i\u003e was supposed to represent the neighborhood, but it failed to include the work of the black artists living and working there. While the Whitney's 1971 exhibition \u003ci\u003eContemporary Black Artists in America\u003c\/i\u003e featured black artists, it was heavily criticized for being haphazard and not representative. The Whitney show revealed the consequences of museums' failure to hire African American curators, or even white curators who possessed knowledge of black art. Cahan also recounts the long history of the Museum of Modern Art's institutional ambivalence toward contemporary artists of color, which reached its zenith in its 1984 exhibition \u003ci\u003e\"Primitivism\" in Twentieth Century Art\u003c\/i\u003e. Representing modern art as a white European and American creation that was influenced by the \"primitive\" art of people of color, the show only served to further devalue and cordon off African American art. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In addressing the racial politics of New York's art world, Cahan shows how aesthetic ideas reflected the underlying structural racism and inequalities that African American artists faced. These inequalities are still felt in America's museums, as many fundamental racial hierarchies remain intact: art by people of color is still often shown in marginal spaces; one-person exhibitions are the preferred method of showing the work of minority artists, as they provide curators a way to avoid engaging with the problems of complicated, interlocking histories; and whiteness is still often viewed as the norm. The ongoing process of integrating museums, Cahan demonstrates, is far broader than overcoming past exclusions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Susan E. Cahan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0822358972\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780822358978\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Duke University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/19\/2016\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 360\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 10.10h x 7.10w x 0.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/01\/2016 pg. 102\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 11\/01\/2015 pg. 102\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/01\/2015 pg. 9\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/21\/2015\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/01\/2016","brand":"Susan E. Cahan","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47452532998399,"sku":"9780822358978","price":47.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_00e0bbf6-0512-4c91-bf02-bac62d9e2f68.jpg?v=1761928992","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/mounting-frustration-susan-e-cahan-9780822358978","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}