Reflections from the University of Nebraska Community
To foster interdisciplinary conversations around works of art and to deepen our understanding of the issues explored in the exhibition Barriers and Disparities: Housing in America, Sheldon Museum of Art invited several members of the University of Nebraska community to each write a brief reflection on or a response to an artwork of their choice, from the perspective of their own interests and areas of expertise. Their texts are included here.
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Charles Henry Alston Deserted House Response by: Adam R. Thompson Assistant Director, Robert J. Kutak Center for the Teaching and Study of Applied Ethics, College of Law Lecturer, Philosophy
John Anansa Thomas Biggers Untitled from the Our Grandmothers book with text by Maya Angelou
Responses by: Jeannette Eileen Jones Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies
John Alvin Anderson Modern Indian Home Responses by: Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom Assistant Research Professor, Center for Great Plains Studies Katrina Jagodinsky Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of History Graduate Chair of History
Gregory E. Rutledge Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
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Solomon D. Butcher The Jacob Coover Sod House Response by: Andrew Husa Lecturer, Geography
Wright Morris Upstairs Bedroom from The Home Place, near Norfolk, Nebraska Response by: Robert Brooke John E. Weaver Professor of English Director, Nebraska Writing Project
John Mackie Falconer Negro Huts, Near Wilmington, N.C. from the American Etchings portfolio 1880 Response by: Ash Eliza Smith Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts
Gordon Parks Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956 Response by: Sarah Deyong Associate Professor of Architecture
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Paul Strand Gordon Parks Willie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956 Response by:
The White Fence, Port Kent, New York from Paul Strand: Portfolio Three Responses by: Jason Griffiths Associate Professor of Architecture
Charlie Foster Assistant Vice Chancellor for Inclusive
Daniel Tannenbaum
Student Excellence
Assistant Professor of Economics
James VanDerZee Louis B. Sloan Self-Portrait
Miss Suzie Porter, Harlem from the James VanDerZee: Eighteen Photographs portfolio
Response by: Patrick D. Jones Asociate Professor of History
Response by: Deirdre Cooper Owens The Charles & Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine Director, Humanities in Medicine Program
Charles Henry Alston
Charlotte, NC 1907–New York, NY 1977 Deserted House 1938 Lithograph Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Helen Y. Thomson Art Gallery Fund, U-5510.2008
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Charles Henry Alston Deserted House
The walls of home confine, but they also define—they tell us where one is free to be. Once free to be one can find a foundation for self-expansion and self-expression—the security to live as one sees fit. Hence, freedom requires a place to be. Eviction, then, is a threat to one’s freedom, and so homelessness a significant reduction of it. Without a place to be, one wonders what they are or can be, that is of course when wandering allows time and energy for such reflection. This deserted home, then, is curious. Was it freely abandoned as one grew to realize that their future lay elsewhere? Was it the site of natural violence—disease or infection pushing life out? Or did its former occupants find their freedom threatened and reduced through forced vacation? The security of home—the need for somewhere to be to be free.
Adam R. Thompson Assistant Director, Robert J. Kutak Center for the Teaching and Study of Applied Ethics, College of Law Lecturer, Philosophy Back to Contents
John Alvin Anderson
Halland, Sweden 1869–Atascadero, CA 1948 Modern Indian Home 1898–1910 Gelatin silver print Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, gift of Mid-America Arts Alliance, U-1959.1976
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John Alvin Anderson Modern Indian Home
This photograph suggests how cultures adapt to new technologies. Here a thípi (tipi) and a wood-frame house—as well as a Lakota man and young child—share a plot of land. At first glance, the image may highlight the federal government’s imposition of the reservation system onto Native Americans. Yet it’s possible that the thípi might have been reserved for ceremonies or used only in the summer, while the Lakota family may have used the “modern” home in the winter months or for cooking. Just as Indigenous Americans incorporated European glass beads into their weaving, they embraced new forms of housing in their daily lives.
Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom Assistant Research Professor, Center for Great Plains Studies
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John Alvin Anderson Modern Indian Home
Taken circa 1898-1910 on the Rosebud Indian
Indigenous people never really abandoned
Reservation in South Dakota, John Alvin
the housing practices they had developed
Anderson’s photograph of a “Modern Indian
over centuries in their Native ecosystems, and
Home” coincides with the efforts of federal
leaders like Winona LaDuke are advocating
Indian agents, politicians, and reformers at
for an integration of traditional and cutting-
the turn of the twentieth century to coerce
edge technologies in twenty-first century
Indigenous people to adopt modern homes
design, such as tipis equipped with solar
like the cabin on the left and abandon
arrays and Tesla charging stations. Tribal
traditional homes like the tipi on the right.
nations throughout the United States are
Photographers like Anderson documented
partnering with non-profit organizations to
this domestic assimilation campaign to portray
build clean energy infrastructure that foster
the supposed successes of federal Indian policy and contributed to a form of salvage ethnography along the way, documenting what anthropologists and artists assumed to be a vanishing way of life among Indigenous people.
energy independence and promote tribal sovereignty and values. It may very well be that over the next century more of us consider the environmental and economic impact of overconsumption and overbuilding, concluding that Indigenous housing technologies are a
What is ironic about Anderson’s title, Modern
modern solution to the increasingly alarming
Indian Home, is that many twenty-first century
problems of homelessness and climate
builders are reconsidering the aesthetic
change.
and ecological advantages of Indigenous technology, including their architectural practices, and are now trying to incorporate
Katrina Jagodinsky
Indigenous design and materials into their
Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of
own projects and marketing them as avant-
History
garde and innovative. At the same time,
Graduate Chair of History
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John Anansa Thomas Biggers Gastonia, NC 1924–Houston, TX 2001
Untitled from the Our Grandmothers book with text by Maya Angelou 1994 Lithograph Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust, H-3069.5.1997
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John Anansa Thomas Biggers Untitled from the Our Grandmothers book with text by Maya Angelou
My eyes immediately focus on the central
heritage of the enslaved who gaze at the
figure, a Black woman who appears to be
majestic Black sun and its corona—a gloriole
resting on a washboard after finishing the
perhaps, representing the radiance of a saint.
laundry. While she has completed her chores,
The rays of the sun meld into the roofs of the
she carries two uprooted homes on her
houses. It is a picture of hope. The travails
head, balancing them as if she was in Africa
of “Our Grandmothers”—Black women who
carrying water to her home. Eight kerchiefed
toiled day and night for white slaveholders—
figures (four men and four women) flank the
will one day end and our mothers and fathers
houses, as they face the radiant Black sun.
“shall not be moved.”
The houses, upon closer inspection, are two larger figures embracing. They too look towards the sun, their bodies made of the very shingles, arches, and corners of the house. All ten figures stand on a boardwalk, perhaps the one on which they disembarked from the slave
Jeannette Eileen Jones Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies
ship onto American shores. The lithograph evokes both the space of the slave quarters, the transatlantic slave trade, and the African
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John Anansa Thomas Biggers Untitled from the Our Grandmothers book with text by Maya Angelou
Why, officially, “Untitled?” Probably for the
African head-covering, a queen’s crown, a
same reasons that many are unhoused:
musical platform for her housed children
The more glorious you are, the more titles
and children’s children? Far above them the
you bear, the grander your houses. And the
drinking gourd, for star-gazing to freedom
opposite. John Anansa Thomas Biggers takes
and the future, a soulful space where five not-
the logical historical consequence (slavery/
angels (read: “flying Africans”)—the dreams of
racism unhouses people) to explore the very
husband and wife making seven—take flight?
meaning of, and the cultural remnants in,
The checkered wholeness that crowns it all,
house. “House,” an ancient word with Indo-
this pyramid, from slave-quarter shadows into
European roots (meaning “to cover”), likely
dark, infinite possibilities?
has far older macro-linguistic roots in our human family some 15,000 years old. Hence Biggers’ Subject: TAKE I slave-quarters, TAKE II a checkered-kerchief as offensive stereotype, and let time do its thing…ACTION! Can you
“Untitled” and unhoused, but Biggers traces the ancient majesty of people’s souls. When we see these souls, homelessness will itself become unhoused.
see the time Biggers wove into the image, its meaning a hidden web, the soul of its essence? (Grand) Mother Africa, a broad-shouldered
Gregory E. Rutledge
sturdy house, and unhousing slave quarters
Associate Professor of English and Ethnic
with interiors receding into infinitude? Native-
Studies
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Solomon D. Butcher
Burton, WV 1856–Greeley, CO 1927 The Jacob Coover Sod House 1887 Gelatin silver prints Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, gift of the Nebraska State Historical Society, U-2374
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Solomon D. Butcher The Jacob Coover Sod House
The Jacob Coover Sod House portrait, like so
families captured in an image by Butcher that
many of portraits by Solomon D. Butcher, gives
were happy to show off the results of their
the viewer a glimpse into the resettlement
hard work and resilience as they built their
of the American Great Plains by Anglo-
homes from the ground (literally) up. This is
Americans, African Americans, and European
just one of the thousands of photographs by
immigrants during the homesteading era,
Butcher that documents the homesteading
which began in 1862. The sod house, or
experience and American resettlement of the
soddy, depicted in this portrait is one of over
region.
1,000 sod houses that were photographed by Butcher. With few to no trees in the American Great Plains at this time, settlers built their homes using strips of the topsoil, which they laid like bricks.
Andrew Husa Lecturer, Geography
Sitting out front in their Sunday best, Jacob Coover and his family are one of the many
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John Mackie Falconer
Edinburgh, Scotland 1820–New York, NY 1903 Negro Huts, Near Wilmington, N.C. from the American Etchings portfolio 1880 Etching Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University Collection, U-423.5.1963
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John Mackie Falconer Negro Huts, Near Wilmington, N.C. from the American Etchings portfolio 1880
This etching connects directly to my current
practices. In 2008, hundreds of acres of
immersive storytelling collaboration,
oceanfront property that once made up the
Seabreeze Bop City, that is based outside of
Seabreeze beach community were bought out
Wilmington in Seabreeze, North Carolina, a
from under families in a partition sale with very
Jim Crow-era beach community where Black
little compensation for them.
people owned the land and all the businesses. Seabreeze was an incubator of African American music and culture throughout the first half of the 20th century.
I’m working with Land Rich, a North Carolinabased non-profit, and the School of Architecture, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona, to link the history of Seabreeze
Seabreeze is an example of a kind of Black
and the land, using storytelling and design
land loss that is endemic throughout the
to raise broad public awareness while
Southeastern United States. Like many
providing an evidentiary tool that families can
historic Black-owned family properties, the
use to communicate their ancestral lands’
land was primarily passed down through the
significance during the heirs’ property legal
generations informally, instead of through
process.
wills or other legally documented transferals of ownership. Much of the land today in Seabreeze is heirs’ property, and, as such,
Ash Eliza Smith
it is vulnerable to predatory development
Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts
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Wright Morris
Central City, NE 1910–Mill Valley, CA 1998 Upstairs Bedroom from The Home Place, near Norfolk, Nebraska 1947 Gelatin silver print, printed 1978/80 Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, gift of Josephine Morris through the University of Nebraska Foundation, U-5100.2000
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Wright Morris Upstairs Bedroom from The Home Place, near Norfolk, Nebraska
In our work with teachers, students, and
place. Wright Morris is Nebraska’s only two-
writers through the Nebraska Writing Project,
time National Book Award winner (for Field
we raise local issues that provide purpose
of Vision, 1957, and Plainsong (For Female
and meaning to young people’s writing.
Voices), 1981)—a hidden gem in our plains
Housing, and the home places we dwell in,
literary and artistic landscape
is one such local issue. Across the Great Plains, homesteads are being abandoned due to the outmigration of young adults, leaving communities depleted. Equally challenging is access to quality living spaces for those seeking to move into plains communities.
Robert Brooke John E. Weaver Professor of English Director, Nebraska Writing Project
In a series of iconic photos taken during the 1940s, Wright Morris sought to capture “what’s just about to vanish” in rural America. The poignancy of an aging farmhouse in Upstairs Bedroom is part of that effort. His photo/writing book The Home Place, in which this image appears, reflects on these issues through the story of an adult son with children returning for a visit to his parents’ Nebraska
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Gordon Parks
Fort Scott, KS 1912–New York, NY 2006 Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956 1956 Pigment print, printed 2013 Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Robert E. Schweser and Fern Beardsley Schweser Acquisition Fund, through the University of Nebraska Foundation, U-6471.2015
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Gordon Parks Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
The focus of this photograph, squarely visible
discriminatory lending practices, and race-
in the near middle-ground, is no ordinary
based dispossessions of property in the name
chain-link fence. It is a barrier that segregates,
of gentrification are but a few of these well-
that excludes much more than it includes. In
documented practices.
the foreground and background, we can infer, very clearly, the photo’s real subject matter: systemic racial and economic injustice. The celebrated photographer, Gordon Parks, took this picture as part of a photo-essay for Life
Sarah Deyong Associate Professor of Architecture
magazine on Jim Crow America. Parks places the viewer on the side of the fence with the children, so we may identify with those who have been excluded. Sixty-five years later, the image remains poignant. Since the Jim Crow era, discriminatory practices against Black lives continue even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in pervasive and insidious ways. Segregation,
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Gordon Parks
Fort Scott, KS 1912–New York, NY 2006 Willie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956 1956 Pigment print, printed 2013 Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Robert E. Schweser and Fern Beardsley Schweser Acquisition Fund, through the University of Nebraska Foundation, U-6472.2015
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Gordon Parks Willie Causey and Family, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956
I have to say that this image touched me immediately. The young woman looking out on what is her life with eyes that say she is dreaming of something…something else. This speaks to me because I am from Alabama. I grew up in the eighties, so my images were different. My wardrobe choices included discount jeans and t-shirts from Sears. But my step-grandmother lived in a shotgun house that was on the property of the slave owner, who had owned the patriarch of her family. I remember reading books that transported me far from her front porch. I remember dreaming of living a life like the people I read about. I remember that look. I feel her heart beating fast. I am like her.
Charlie Foster Assistant Vice Chancellor for Inclusive Student Excellence Back to Contents
Louis B. Sloan
Philadelphia, PA 1932–Philadelphia, PA 2008
Self-Portrait 1956 Oil on canvas Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Olga N. Sheldon Acquisition Trust, U-5539.2009
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Louis B. Sloan Self-Portrait
Nineteen fifty-six. As a historian of the civil
His trim and tidy figure stands firm, but not
rights movement, that date is what is initially
stiff, eyes level, confident and knowing, his
most striking to me about this stunning self-
carriage conveying a quiet strength and
portrait by under-appreciated Philadelphia
controlled confidence against a backdrop not
artist, Louis Sloan. Nineteen fifty-six was
of sad, dilapidated slum housing—another
a tumultuous and transitional year for the
common trope of the era—but of clean
struggle for racial justice. Just two years
architectural lines, clear geometric shapes,
on from the monumental Brown decision.
and softly lit, even lovely, hues. This depiction
One from the slaughter of Emmett Till. The
of blackness, though more subtle, is no less
Montgomery Bus Boycott, which had started
assertive, or proud, than the raised fists of the
in December of 1955, was still in progress,
Black Power era, or the signs held by striking
unsettled. And in response to the prospect
Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, which
of transformational racial change, thousands
read, “I am a man.” And while there are no
of white southerners had unleashed a brutal
bald political gestures, Sloan’s self-portrait
counter-movement that came to be known as
conveys a similar sense of self-worth and
“massive resistance.” In our popular memory
human value that is not up for question or
of African American experience during this
contest, but merely self-evident, transcending
period, the images that dominate tend to
the conditions and expectations of white
capture the inequality and degradation of
supremacy.
segregation, the initial stirrings of the freedom movement, or the recalcitrance of southern white racists. But here, Sloan is unconcerned with such momentous events, asserting instead a more subtle kind of racial dignity.
Patrick D. Jones Asociate Professor of History
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Paul Strand
New York, NY 1890–Orgeval, France 1976
The White Fence, Port Kent, New York from Paul Strand: Portfolio Three 1916 Gelatin silver print, printed 1980 Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, gift of Michael E. Hoffman, U-4055.1.1987
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Paul Strand The White Fence, Port Kent, New York from Paul Strand: Portfolio Three
“On the Fence” For many people the garden fence describes hominess. It defines the exact line of decorum and good neighborliness. Homeowners set up a fence to mark the threshold of what they own. Many homeowners are not indifferent to the fence either. They are not on the fence about fences. For many people fences do not divide
Perhaps people who have a home but no fence are not indifferent to the fence either. To them the fence may be offensive too, but in a different way. They may also not be on the fence about the fence. Amid all the confusion of the fence—of offense, difference, dividing lines, divisiveness and division—perhaps it is simply better just to stay on the fence.
but unite. To describe this dividing line as divisive is, perhaps, offensive. But while the fence physically marks the
Jason Griffiths Associate Professor of Architecture
extent of a property it also visibly frames the home as an architectural image. A home with a fence becomes an icon of hominess to be appreciated from the street. In this sense, physically owning a home may also extend to owning the idea of home as well. But compared to this ideal image of home, are all other homes less homey? If your home is an apartment, a trailer, a camper or a collection of belongings by the street, is this any less a home? Back to Contents
Paul Strand The White Fence, Port Kent, New York from Paul Strand: Portfolio Three
For many Americans, the house is a symbol of upward mobility. It is a means for acquiring wealth, an investment in one’s children. It represents the private sphere, safety from the elements, and from the intrusion of unwelcome guests. But the house also has a deeper and more uncomfortable resonance in American history, as an instrument of exclusion, and a means for enforcing discriminatory government policies, such as redlining and school segregation, which excluded African Americans from the benefits of homeownership and public schools. Fencing, as a visual theme, represents both the separation of private and public spaces, and the boundaries that maintain social separation and caste, which have limited access to the American dream.
Daniel Tannenbaum Assistant Professor of Economics
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James VanDerZee
Lenox, MA 1886–Washington, DC 1983 Miss Suzie Porter, Harlem from the James VanDerZee: Eighteen Photographs portfolio 1915 Gelatin silver print, published 1974 Sheldon Museum of Art, Nebraska Art Association, purchased with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, N-423.5.1976
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James VanDerZee Miss Suzie Porter, Harlem from the James VanDerZee: Eighteen Photographs portfolio
This photograph seems to represent an
in a country that denied them this option.
oppositional view of urban African Americans
Despite the great societal barriers most
compared to mainstream images and ideas of
African Americans faced in terms of locating
African Americans as not only rural dwellers
safe and secure housing in the United States,
but also poor people. James VanDerZee
here we see a Black woman surrounded by
was the preeminent black photographer of
the accoutrements of wealth in a beautiful
Harlem’s Black elite and Suzie Porter’s striking
home. Miss Porter’s opulent image stands
image encapsulates the glamour of Harlem’s
in direct contrast to what most Americans
glitterati. Porter is in a setting that shows the
believed about Black people and it stands as a
influence of the Victorian era, from her attire
testament to the diversity of Black Americans.
to her home’s décor (even her plant sits atop a lace covering). Miss Porter, and it is important to note that VanDerZee calls her “Miss” because Black women were not typically afforded this form of respect outside of their communities. Thus, it is striking to note that VanDerZee intentionally positioned a Black
Deirdre Cooper Owens The Charles & Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine Director, Humanities in Medicine Program
woman as representative of genteel ladyhood
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