DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 52central aspect of our African American culinary heritage. From the African imprint left on the foodwaysof the New World to the creative means of acquiring,producing, and distributing foods, African Americanfoodways have never been simple or as one-dimensional as the single story implies.Ultimately, this exhibition highlighted some of thesedimensions and dynamics, and as the lead curator,I was intent on not telling a singular narrative andon introducing visitors to new ways of reading material objects that are often only interpreted from thestandpoint of the moneyed and the wealthy.Works ReferencedCathy J. Cohen,“Punks, Bulldaggers and WelfareQueens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”,GLQ, 3/4(1997), 437–465.“Lives Bound Together Online”, 2018, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/livesbound-together-online/.Stephen McLeod,Dining with the Washingtons: Historic Recipes, Entertaining, and Hospitality fromMount Vernon(Chapel Hill, 2011).Reading the objects for their uses—intended and unintended—from an intersectionalpoint of view should be a central undertakingin queering the museum.Pushing past the unbalanced power relations thatoften exist in interpretations should be another goal.Lastly, seeking to read the gaps and being purposeful and radical in doing so by allowing oneself to divedeep into the research to ensure accuracy and balance will go a long way toward finding the absentpotential in most museum exhibitions we might curate.“NLM Exhibit Provides Backstory”, Complexity toWhat We Know About Slavery, NLM in Focus, 2 December 2016, https://nihrecord.nih.gov/2016/12/02/nlm-exhibit-provides-backstory-complexity-what-weknow-about-slavery.Sandra L. Richards,“Writing the Absent Potential.Drama, Performance, and the Canon of AfricanAmerican Literature”, in Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick(eds.),Performance and Performativity(London and New York, 1996), 64–88.Nikki Sullivan and Craig Middleton,Queering theMuseum(Abingdon, 2020).Psyche Williams-Forson and Abby Wilkerson,“Intersectionality and Food Studies”, inFood, Culture&Society, 14/(2011), pp. 7–28.Fig. 12: The landing page for the online exhibitionFire& Freedom: Food& Enslavement in Early America,URL:https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/fireandfreedom/index.html(2016)
