That question haunted me as I travelled to Hartford, Connecticut, on the Fourth of July. I went to see the Wadsworth Atheneum’s exhibition Framing American Democracy: Contemporary Artists Reflect, on view until 13 September.
My decades as a China scholar leave me particularly wary of authoritarianism.
On 19 August, 2013, President Xi Jinping exhorted the media and cultural institutions to “tell the good China story” (讲好中国故事). Artists and intellectuals were urged to promote a positive image of China and its peaceful development.
Xi Jinping’s control of culture is echoed now by Donald Trump’s censorship in the United States. Trump is ordering museums and national parks to remove references to slavery, lynchings, the genocide of Native Americans, and other dark aspects of US history. The demand for “content corrections” seeks to remove “divisive or ideologically driven language” to celebrate “Americanism,” i.e., the “strength, breadth, and achievements of the American story”.
As I was heartened to see in Hartford, pressure to whitewash American history has tempered but not squelched critiques. The Wadsworth exhibition manages to honour America’s ideals without ignoring its shortcomings.
The city of Hartford holds an exalted place in US history. It is sometimes called the “birthplace of American Democracy” because city leaders wrote the Fundamental Orders of 1639, the first written constitution in North America.
Hartford was a manufacturing giant during the Industrial Revolution and grew into the global centre of the insurance industry. During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, it was the richest city, per capita, in the United States. It’s a place where history is treated with reverence.
So it felt apt to see Framing American Democracy: Contemporary Artists Reflect at the Wadsworth, the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the country.
The adroitly assembled exhibition—there are two companion shows running at the Wadsworth—features 65 works on themes of democratic ideals, stereotypes, partisan symbolism, and the malleability of history. Thought-provoking curation puts the works in conversation, offering astute commentaries on the American experiment.
Because I was already thinking about parallels between the United States and China, I was first drawn to Vito Acconci’s 3 Flags for 1 Space and 6 Regions (1979–1981). The print shows the Stars and Stripes and the flag of the People’s Republic of China side by side and overlapping the flag of the Soviet Union.
Highlighting the geopolitical rivalry of the Cold War superpowers, this work imputed that China was on its way to eclipsing the USSR, a prescient view. Looking at it now also reminds me that America’s emulation of its autocratic rivals is not new.
In the second gallery, an uncredited video montage excerpts speeches by former presidents John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), and Barack Obama (2009-2017).
The clips capture their references to the “city upon a hill” metaphor Puritan John Winthrop used in 1630. Quotations on the wall feature key sentences of Winthrop’s text and each of the three speeches.
Surprisingly, these three Presidents, two progressives and one conservative, share an idealised vision of a diverse and multicultural nation. JFK came from a progressive political dynasty, Reagan was an iconic free-market conservative, and Obama, the first black president. All three were celebrated for their oratory skills, unlike Trump.
I was bewildered to find myself soothed by Reagan’s 1989 speech, Farewell Address to the Nation. I was struck by the former actor’s gift for projecting earnestness, as when he refers to America as a “shining city”: “in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace”.
“We did it!” Reagan declares triumphantly to exalt his eight years in office. During the 1980s, progressives—including my family—demonised Reagan. But compared to Trump, he almost looks good.
Reagan’s free-market ideology was principled and consistent, at least, whereas Trump’s kleptocracy is purely opportunistic.
The montage honours American ideals of inclusivity and opportunity for all. But given the war on immigrants now, I couldn’t help but rue the betrayal of the three presidents’ inclusive vision.
The video calls to mind the history of American exceptionalism, the aspiration to be a model for the world. Inspired by the exhibition’s open-minded critiques, I’m reminded of how often the United States has forsaken its democratic ideals, and the hypocrisy in our past and present.
Is it my history, though?
Although I wasn’t born here, my mother was, and I came as a small child. My grandparents and father were immigrants who spent most of their lives here. That makes me an American, but without the deep roots of those whose families have been here for generations. My mom and dad, raised by my Russian and British grandparents, weren’t immersed in American culture.
It’s always been a struggle for me to feel that I belong. Though I was born in England, I now feel like a foreigner there. And I certainly felt like a foreigner when studying in China, France, Taiwan, and the former Soviet Union.
But often I also feel like an outsider when I hear discussions of American popular culture. I missed so much of it due to my parents and my focus on classical music, languages, and my academic career.
Last year, as President Trump was pushing the US further toward fascism, I renewed my expired British passport. That passport, before Brexit, had facilitated my living in France, and I considered moving there. Now I’m more settled and less eager to relocate. Still, the passport reminds me that I don’t share many Americans’ chauvinistic attachment to the US.
Approaching the exhibition from a cross-cultural perspective, I especially welcomed the rich and varied voices in Framing American Democracy. As someone who has seriously considered leaving the country for good, the show bolstered my hope that the US is not yet a sinking ship.
After watching the video, I turned to an enormous hand-drawn map of the United States. Entitled The American Dream (2020) by British artist Grayson Perry, this red-white-and-blue work is covered mostly with war and weather symbols.
At the top of the map, a God-like Mark Zuckerberg stares out from the middle of a fiery sun. Like tentacles, red arrows emanate from its centre, each labelled with negative emotions: “Triggered Affronted Bitter Resentment” reads the largest. “Enraged Fear” reads another.
Hurricanes, cyclones, and explosions are given labels identified with political controversy. A red hurricane labelled “Woke” rages off the East Coast. The coast itself is labelled “Liberal Elites,” while other sections of the country include “Moral High Ground,” “Family Values” and “Social Justice.”
The background features blue war machines—drones, fighter jets and warships—along with helicopters, cruise ships and sailboats. They bear buzzwords from the culture wars: Racism, White Privilege, Pro-Life, Fake News, Intersectionality, and Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.
Smaller red symbols are captioned with tags such as Big Pharma, Magical Thinking, Mass Shooter, and Turkeys Voting for Christmas.
Perry’s map lampoons the way social media algorithms stoke distress, indignation, and polarisation. Looking at his emblems of conflict, I lamented the emotional manipulation that keeps us scrolling online.
Other works in Framing American Democracy drew me in with their focus on racism.
Hank Willis Thomas’s Basketball and Chain (2003) shows the lower legs of a black basketball player captured in mid-air. The first thing I noticed was his energetic buoyancy. But then I saw the shackle around his ankle, chained to a heavy basketball with the NBA seal. His Nike high-top shoes flaunt the commercialisation of black athletes’ bodies.
Two black-and-white portraits by Carrie Mae Weems “flip the notion of the stereotype on its head”. The first, Black Woman with Chicken (1988) shows a young woman seated in a restaurant booth, holding a fried chicken drumstick in her right hand. The way she holds her left hand in front of her chin makes her look wary and vulnerable.
The second, Black Man with a Watermelon (1987), features a young man cradling a large watermelon. He wears a white T-shirt, a vest and jeans. Like the woman with the drumstick, part of his face is very much in shadow.
The photos’ emphatic titles accentuate the rounded depth of the chiaroscuro lighting. The two photos side by side and their conspicuous labelling underscore the disparity between the diffident individuals and the framing of stereotypes.
One of my personal favourite works was Fritz Scholder’s Bi-centennial Indian, one of twelve prints from the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio (1975), commissioned by the makers of Kent cigarettes. The museum label explains that the artists were asked to respond to the prompt, “What does independence mean to you?”
Reflecting on this question, I don’t dwell on US independence in 1776. Instead, I hear longings for self-rule from Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kurds, Basques, and Palestinians.
Recognising peoples robbed of their homeland, Native American artist Scholder presents a seated “Indian” in traditional dress, with a huge American flag draped over his legs. Warpaint across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose suggests that he’s a warrior, as do elements of his ceremonial regalia. His pose in a Victorian chair recalls a formal European portrait, an incongruity that reminded me how often Native Americans are depicted outside, in nature. He holds a huge eagle feather, a symbol of bravery, strength, and leadership.
Stephanie Syjuco also confronts the legacy of settler colonialism with Obsolete Transparency (2022). The print repurposes one of the Wadsworth’s most famous holdings, John Vanderlyn’s The Murder of Jane McCrea (1804), also on view.
Vanderlyn’s original Neoclassical painting depicts a white woman pleading on her knees as a Native American warrior grasps her long hair while another raises a tomahawk to kill her. Because the woman’s right breast is almost hanging out of the bodice of her dress, a threat of rape also looms over the scene. During America’s westward expansion, such images were used to fuel and then excuse the genocide of indigenous peoples.
What makes Obsolete Transparency such a compelling work is that Syjuco displays Vanderlyn’s notorious painting overlaid with an archival label documenting the Wadsworth’s ownership. This palimpsest underscores the power of museums and their curators to promulgate partisan narratives. Notably, of all the museum’s holdings, The Murder of Jane McCrea is the one other museums most frequently request to borrow.
Although Framing American Democracy: Contemporary Artists Reflect did not assuage my apprehension about where the US is headed, it did remind me how important freedom of expression is and why it must be vigorously defended.
Do works in the show resonate differently because artists are now at greater risk than when the works were created? Or do we reframe them because we’ve changed?
Before the US veered toward fascism, we were more hopeful, for ourselves and for the country. Democracy is founded on the hope that our lives could get better.
The Wadsworth astutely frames dissent as an act of loyalty and responsibility. The quotation from James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (1955) seen in a gallery feels like a mission statement for the show: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
Photograph courtesy of Geoff Livingstone. Published under a Creative Commons license.
