DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 39exhibitions are seen in public libraries, medical and academiclibraries, and cultural centresnationwide and worldwide. Thispoint was especially interestingto me because it suggested thatthis exhibition could have a farreaching impact on informing theworld about the roles of enslavedBlack women and men and theircontributions to the evolution ofAmerican cuisine—a departurefrom the narratives and storiesthat are usually told about African Americans in the UnitedStates.In the fall of 2014, I was invited by the Exhibition Program at the National Library of Medicine(NLM) atthe National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland(USA), to be the lead curator of an exhibition thatexplored the early North American nation’s first FirstLady, Martha Washington, and food. I was told thatthe project could consider“cultural influences on foodand diets during the Colonial era, and the role of women and enslaved peoples in preparing food for thefamily and/or plantations, among other themes”. Forreference, I was pointed to our colleagues at the library at Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington,the nation’s first president, and a slaveholder, becausethey“have done good research on the topic and willbe collaborating with us”(NLM email).The Exhibition Program at NLM produces specialdisplays, traveling and online banner exhibitions that“explore the social and cultural history of scienceand medicine”(NLM website). The travelling bannerIn their edited collection,Queering the Museum,Nikki Sullivanand Craig Middleton maintainthat“museums are both shaped by and shape thesocial-political landscapes in which they operate andare thus implicated in systems of power and privilege”.1Given this, the power to convey a message ofAfrican American creativity, survival, and resiliencewas critically important to me as the visiting curator.More importantly, there was an opportunity here notto centre on slaveholders but, instead, on those whoendured and resisted the horrors of chattel slaveryusing their talents with food and in other areas ofdomesticity. I refused to be a party to reinforcing traditional narratives of white power and Black subservience, despite Black enslavement.For over twenty years, I have been studying the material lives of African Americans, particularly theirrelationships to food and food cultures—acquisition,preparation, and consumption, among other aspects.I am not a full-time museum professional but an academic trained in museum practices who believes that1Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton,Queering the Museum(Abingdon, 2020), 107.
