DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.3| WILLIAMS-FORSON: SEEKING THE ABSENT POTENTIAL_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 52 central aspect of our African American culinary her­itage. From the African imprint left on the foodways of the New World to the creative means of acquiring, producing, and distributing foods, African American foodways have never been simple or as one-dimen­sional as the single story implies. Ultimately, this exhibition highlighted some of these dimensions and dynamics, and as the lead curator, I was intent on not telling a singular narrative and on introducing visitors to new ways of reading mate­rial objects that are often only interpreted from the standpoint of the moneyed and the wealthy. Works Referenced Cathy J. Cohen,“Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: 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 from Mount Vernon (Chapel Hill, 2011). Reading the objects for their uses—inten­ded and unintended—from an intersectional point of view should be a central undertaking in queering the museum. Pushing past the unbalanced power relations that often 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 dive deep into the research to ensure accuracy and ba­lance will go a long way toward finding the absent potential in most museum exhibitions we might cu­rate. “NLM Exhibit Provides Backstory”, Complexity to What 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 African American 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 the Museum (Abingdon, 2020). Psyche Williams-Forson and Abby Wilkerson,“Inter­sectionality and Food Studies”, in Food, Culture& Society , 14/(2011), pp. 7–28. Fig. 12: The landing page for the online exhibition Fire & Freedom: Food& Enslavement in Early America, URL: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/fireandfreedom/index. html(2016)