DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 39 exhibitions are seen in public li­braries, medical and academic libraries, and cultural centres nationwide and worldwide.  This point was especially interesting to me because it suggested that this exhibition could have a far­reaching impact on informing the world about the roles of enslaved Black women and men and their contributions to the evolution of American cuisine—a departure from the narratives and stories that are usually told about Af­rican Americans in the United States. In the fall of 2014, I was invited by the Exhibition Pro­gram at the National Library of Medicine(NLM) at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Mary­land(USA), to be the lead curator of an exhibition that explored the early North American nation’s first First Lady, Martha Washington, and food. I was told that the project could consider“cultural influences on food and diets during the Colonial era, and the role of wo­men and enslaved peoples in preparing food for the family and/or plantations, among other themes”. For reference, 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, because they“have done good research on the topic and will be collaborating with us”(NLM email). The Exhibition Program at NLM produces special displays, traveling and online banner exhibitions that “explore the social and cultural history of science and medicine”(NLM website). The travelling banner In their edited collection, Quee­ring the Museum, Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton maintain that“museums are both shaped by and shape the social-political landscapes in which they operate and are thus implicated in systems of power and privile­ge”. 1 Given this, the power to convey a message of African American creativity, survival, and resilience was critically important to me as the visiting curator. More importantly, there was an opportunity here not to centre on slaveholders but, instead, on those who endured and resisted the horrors of chattel slavery using their talents with food and in other areas of domesticity. 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 their relationships 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 that 1 Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton, Queering the Museum (Abingdon, 2020), 107.