BETTINA M. CARBONELLJohn Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

The Afterlife of Lynching:Exhibitions and the Re-compositionof Human SufferingTHE IDEAS I WILL PRESENT HERE ADDRESS THE ETHICS AND AESTHETICS OFrepresentation and reception. When museums and other exhibitionvenues arrange, contextualize, and gloss the extant evidence of inhumanbrutality and human suffering, audience members are called upon to beboth witnesses after the fact and parties responsible for the present andthe future. Museum professionals and museum visitors are thusaccountable for the immediate and long-term consequences of theircontact with volatile representations. Under these circumstances urgentquestions arise: What happens to the "facts" pertaining to victims andperpetrators when they are subjected to the aegis and decorum of aweU-composed and carefully formulated history? What is the currentstatus of acts of violence when they are represented in exhibitions?What are the immediate and long-term, possibly traumatic effects of ourexposure to such representations? These questions require us to confrontthe morality of human actions and yet, while the answers have practicalconsequences, our attempts to respond—to find answers—^will often leadto the abstractions of theory. I will also take this turn, but in examiningactions before turning to theory I hope to mitigate the more comfortablerealms of abstraction. In this case the actions, and my experiences aswitness and theorist, took place in a tangible zone of contact whereimages, people, and events coexisted in less-than-hospitable but perhapsmorally effective environments.

My practical examples are two exhibitions with a common historicalsubject and shared object base but quite different "poetics" of visualdisplay. As objects of study these two exhibitions, which I wiU placeunder the intentionally troubling rubric "the afterhfe of lynching," areimportant ends in themselves. At the same time, they bring into focus abroader field of inquiry: the institutional re-presentation of humansuffering. I use the term "institutional" here to locate national and localgovernments and competing special interest groups; buildings which

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house exhibitions; habits, customs, conventions of visual display; and,last but not least, rituals of academic and critical reception, includingjournals, reviews, symposia and conferences.'

Early in the year 2000 two exhibitions of lynching photographs werepresented in New York City. The ñrst, entitled Witness: Photographs ofLynchings ñ-om the Collection of fames Allen and John Littleßeld, wasmounted at the Roth Horowitz GaUery (January 13-February 12,2000);the second, entitled Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography inAmerica, brought the AUen and Littlefleld coUection and other objectstogether at the New-York Historical Society (March 14-October 1,2000). Each exhibition title underscored the self-reflexive nature ofbeing a party to such displays, and by this I mean a party to acts ofcoUection, exhibition, vieA^dng, reception, and analysis. In each case thecomposition of the exhibit entailed the re-presentation of humansuffering but the photographs of the original events naturaUy took onnew meaning as a result of the context in which they were presented.Because the exhibits offered viewers two radically different approachesto the re-composition of this history, they have given us a valuableopportunity to analyze the ethics and aesthetics of our encounters withthe afterlife of lynching.

When we attempt to recompose human suffering we may encounterdeflance and disturbance in various forms. Consequently, as I go on todescribe and compare these exhibitions, several ethical/aestheticconcerns wiU hover in the background:

• the stark contrast between the disorder of a traumatic experience,an event which causes a separation from coherent /continuous /linear time in the individual and/or collective consciousness, andthe more deliberate, generally lucid pattems of history

'in Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory, Jonathan Markovitz surveysand analyzes the efficacy of the lynching exhibitions, related public programs, reviewers'critical reactions, and ongoing Web dialogues, and he asks probing questions about theongoing use of lynching as an explanatory metaphor and/or analogue. In Ught of thesequestions I should note that the annual conference of the American Studies Association(held in Hartford, CT, October 16-19,2003) was devoted to the theme of "Violence andBelonging"; this conference gave me an opportunity to present the first version of thisessay, "Where Does Violence Belong?: Memory, Museums, and the InstitutionalRe-Presentation of Human Suffering."

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•• the audacity ofviolence when it is first experienced by individualsand communities, and later when it is re-composed within thenarrative field of an exhibition

• the active versus passive gaze• the collective versus individual gaze• the disagreements which arise when individual, collective, and

institutional memories find themselves occupying a single groundand must negotiate the distinctions between "memory, mythos,and history" (Ruffins 509)

These concerns emerge in debates about the mission, design, andlocation of the National Museum of African American History andCulture, about how to prevent a scene ofviolence from being trivializedas a tourist destination, and about the proprieties (decorum) andconflicting demands of commerce, pubhc memory, and personal memoryat the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. The stakes seemto be no less than the creation of what Peace Studies scholar TerenceDuffy describes as "a human rights culture" (10).

Witnessw2s, installed in the intimate (roughly 16' x 16') space of theRoth Horowitz gallery. Co-owner Andrew Roth, motivated by the desireto "reveal history" in a "millennium" exhibition (it was, after aU, the turnof the century), took a collection which "no one else wanted to show"and let the photographs speak for themselves. For Roth this was a"heterogeneous" installation which, in keeping with the rare book andmanuscript component of the gallery, included some literature.^ Visitorsto Witness were confronted by approximately sixty images confinedwithin close quarters. The gallery is a slightly modified version of theconventional "white cube," but here the strategies of display ran counterto austere, modem, "institutional" gallery practices which might insistupon uniformity of frames, ample space between objects / images, andample space for visitors. In the course of a conversation aboutinstitutional "aesthetics," Roth recalled that his intention was to "giveeach image its own territory" but, and this is due in part to theoverwhelming number of visitors, I would testify that both viewer andimage seemed to occupy an appropriately constricted space in which tobear witness.

^These observations and direct quotations are based on personal interviews withAndrew Roth and access to comment books and files at the Roth Horowitz Gallery.

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Visitors encountered the horrible excesses and chUUng formaUties oflynching via clusters of mainly postcard-size images; we did so in adeficiency of viewing space. In order to enter, once the exhibition hadbeen widely covered in the media, we had to endure long Unes andbitterly cold temperatures; to enter the gaUery we bad to step down andpass tbrough a narrow haUway leading to the smaU exhibition space.Once we were inside, the images were inescapable—there was nosanctuary. In retrospect, as my horizon of reception shifts, I find aresemblance between my experience of the clusters of images at RothHorowitz and my subsequent experience in the days after the attack onthe World Trade Center, wben New Yorkers gravitated toward thespontaneous arrangements of objects (pictures, drawings, messages)which coUected our grief in pubUc spaces. It is necessary to note,however, that tbe first 9/11 memorials were composed of celebratorylife-affirming moments (graduations, weddings, anniversaries, andparties), not documentation, certainly not celebration, of violent deatb.As collector James AUen notes, tbe unmediated documentary value oflyncbing pbotograpbs is compUcated by tbe fact tbat photographersoften "compulsively composed silvery tableaux (natures mortes)positioning and Ughting corpses as if they were game birds sbot on tbewing" (204). Civen the circumstances of tbe composition of these"originals," is it possible and/or ethical that, in their afterlives, thesecompositions can be re-composed and asked to function as memorials?If yes, under wbat conditions? If yes, wbat and wbo are weremembering?

Without Sanctuary-was a mucb larger exhibition whicb included tbeAUen-Littlefield coUection and otber objects, plus anciUary events, at tbeNew-York Historical Society (N-YHS). Institutional conventionsincluding tbe mat, tbe frame, the label, and tbe explanatory waU panelwere in place. In a 1,540 square-foot exbibition space (54'x27'), rougblysix times tbat of tbe Rotb Horowitz space and witb double its ceiUngbeigbt (8' at tbe gaUery and 16' at N-YHS), evidence of crucialcounter-movements was instaUed, including the ongoing anti-lyncbingcrusade and key poUtical and artistic acbievements of AfricanAmericans. Tbe Society's compositional frame thereby incorporated abroader bistorical perspective and interpretation.

Using major wall panels and a more beterogeneous coUection ofobjects, while keeping mainly within tbe genre of pbotograpbic images.

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the N-YHS supplied the orientation and deeper context tbat was absentin tbe Roth Horowitz gallery presentation. The N-YHS exhibitionempbasized botb the lawlessness of lynching—"Outnumbered andoverwbelmed, the victim has no means of redress, since the mobfunctions as self-appointed prosecutor, jury, judge, and executioner"—and tbe dedicated, weU-organized crusade against lyncbing. Tbe keyroles of the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople, the Committee on Interracial Cooperation, and the Associationof Southern Women for tbe Prevention of Lyncbing were empbasized,and tbe anti-lyncbing efforts of prominent "activists and intellectuals,"including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Bamett, George H. Wbite,Mary Cburcb Terrell and W.E.B. Du Bois, were acknowledged. A waUtext also warned visitors tbat "Tbe pbotographs in this exhibition arepainful to see." Tbrougb tbe use of pbotograpbs from tbe ScbomburgCenter for Researcb in Black Culture, tbe N-YHS brougbt Douglass,WeUs-Bamett, Terrell, Du Bois, Wbite, Joel Springam, ArtburSpringam, James Weldon Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well asnumerous unnamed participants in anti-lynching demonstrations, intothe compositional frame. The dense composition of the lynching canvaswas further realized via the addition of objects, primarily from tbeSociety's collections, wbich included books, pampblets, broadsides, andlyncbing-related objects such as a whip with a wood handle bearing tbeimage of a screaming man.*

The planning phase, an uncharacteristically brief period due to tbeunexpected opportunity to exbibit tbe Allen and Littlefield collectionafter its sbowing at Roth Horowitz, entailed an intense effort to involveevery member of tbe staff. Tbrougb meetings and discussions, includingsessions witb tbe organization Eacing History and Ourselves, staffmembers, including security guards, received training in tbepresentation of "difficult history" (Hulser). Significant attention wasgiven to public programs; financing was supplied by Tbe Gilder LebrmanInstitute of American History and otber sources tbat enabled tbe Societyto organize a series of pubHc symposia. Juha Hotten, tben at tbeSchomburg Center, was bired as co-curator to develop the largerhistorical context. By examining the exhibition files and speaking with

*rhe New-York Historical Society staff provided access to the exhibition files; theactive dialogue and cooperation of L J. Krizner, former Director of Education, andKathleen Hulser, Public Historian, were essential to my research.

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members of the exhibition team, I came to understand the great effortinvolved in presenting this multi-dimensional composition of history.The N-YHS and collector / co-curator James Allen sought ways to offera fuller context and more comprehensive history of lynching. Thisexhibition was intended, in part, as a corrective to the Roth Horowitzpresentation of the images,* where very little space was devoted to alarger context (of the anti-lynching crusades, for example).

At the N-YHS this comprehensive history was offered not only byincorporating some of the Society's relevant holdings, which alsointroduced New York itself as a context, but by expanding the literal andintellectual space of the exhibition through dialogue and debate. It wasan unusual undertaking at a number of levels. According to KathleenHulser, Public Historian at the N-YHS, the fact that no temporary wallswere erected to manage the pre-existing space, and that the lynchingimages were not enlarged for display, demonstrated that the integrity ofthe original images was a primary concern. The lynching photographsthemselves were hung in a single row, at eye level, circling the gallery(Turner). However, via the homogenizing force of single-pointperspective as a "window" or opening onto a rational "spatial continuum"(Panofsky 27), the Society's effort to "centralize" the anti-lynchingcampaign within the exhibition's assertive compositional frame wasrealized.

Their goal was not to present an "encyclopedic treatment of lynchingin America"; they hoped instead "to provide interpretive tools for theaudience to understand a collection of challenging documents inAmerican history. . . ." (Desmond). The resulting paradox is that, byoffering a more heterogeneous and more deeply contextualizedre-composition, which incorporated constructive counter-movements,the organization of the Historical Society's "canvas" was arguably toorational, too homogeneous, an unintended result of the imposition ofthat deeper historical perspective. The exhibition successfully mirroredthe work of the original anti-lynching forces, but in doing so it distancedand protected the viewer from the unadulterated, searing violence towhich the actual lynching images testify. Arguably, the deeper contextfor lynching at the N-YHS afforded viewers an opportunity to regain

*The need for a corrective was noted by Grady Turner, then Director of Exhibitionsat N-YHS, who explained that the absence of context at Roth Horowitz contributed tothe impression that the images were being aestheticized.

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their composure in the face of lawlessness. In contrast, the unmediatedand largely unmitigated re-composition at Roth Horowitz gave theviewer little recourse to the space beyond lynching. Clearly re-composition is unavoidable in our attempts to represent the past, but intaking such actions we sometimes risk diluting or overwhelming ourprimary subject. In this context it becomes necessary to consider somelarger issues: the ongoing status of outrageous acts of violence whichremain latent in our Ufeworlds; the immediate and long-term traumaticeffects of these acts on communities and individuals, including visitorsto an exhibition; and the reappearance of these acts under the aegis of acarefuUy formulated history.

In search of terms and concepts which may allow us to thinkconstructively about these issues and about the paradoxes presented bythe two exhibitions, I wiU tum to the study of perspective in the visualarts and the study of genres, or the "content of the form," in historicalnarratives. My combined approach to visual perspective and historicalnarrative is indebted to the work of Erwin Panofsky and Hayden White,two major theorists of cultures and their forms of representation. Theirwork affords us a way of thinking about

1) the role of central (single-point or Unear) perspective in thecomposition of history2) the role of narrative in the composition of history3) the benefits and burdens of parataxis (presentation withouthierarchical ordering) in the presentation of history

Panofsky and White identify certain strategies that have enabledartists and historians to recompose the world, and their observationsprove useful in analyzing both the motives and the methods used toexhibit and thus recompose human suffering. The consequences of theseacts of re-composition and their subsequent reception by the viewer /reader are of special concern when the subject matter itself continues totrouble the present and to call for responsible action, as it does with the"history" of lynching.^ This theoretical work on representation is helpfulin the artictdation of very practical issues concerning the ethics andaesthetics of a museum and/or gallery exhibition, since here, too, wecreate spaces in which reason and coherence are brought to bear on

'See for example Stolberg, "The Senate Apologizes, Mostly," in which recentattention to "lynching victims and their descendents" exposes an ongoing lack ofconsensus on how best to take responsibility and make amends.

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physical evidence of actions that defy reason and disturb our composure.Theory, in this case, offers a way to explain how the visitor's encounterwith the radical force of lynching may have been formally compromisedat the N-YHS where, when located in relation to its contemporarycounter-movements, lynching was effectively contextualized within arational construction.

In Perspective as Symbolic Eorm (1925), Panofsky investigates themotives, methods, and manipulations of single-point perspective, inwhich objects are represented and arranged in space as they wouldappear from an ideal, single point of view (76-77). He points out,however, that such representations are not realistic insofar as they create"a fully rational—that is, infinite, unchanging and homogeneous visualspace" which can be postulated visually but never performedexperientially (28-29). An additional concern for our context, as SusanSontag emphasizes in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), is that "No'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at otherpeople's pain" (7). Panofsky appears to anticipate Sontag's ethicalsensitivity by paying very close attention to the unrealistic andmanipulative dimensions of single-point perspective. He explains thatthe creation of such space is not, in fact, an approximation of reality butan "abstraction from reality," since "we can no more speak ofhomogeneity than of infinity" (28-30).

Panofsky claims that "it is not only the effect of perspectivalconstruction, but indeed its intended purpose, to realize in therepresentation of space precisely that homogeneity and boundlessnessforeign to the direct experience of that space" (30-31). When referringto the phenomenon of "geometrical" homogeneity, the construction ofspace which gives it a uniformity that it cannot have in reality, he claimsthat perspective "Negates the differences between front and back,between right and left, between bodies and intervening ('empty' space),so that the sum of all the parts of space and all its contents are absorbedinto a single 'quantum continuum"' (31). One could say that the actualthree-dimensional space of an exhibition allows the viewer to inferempty spaces, at times to see the fronts and backs of objects, to reversedirection, etc., and it appears that such freedom of movement wasintended by the N-YHS staff. If the overall compositional or governing"narrative" of an exhibition is persuasive, however, then the viewer wiU

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Ukely make these moves within the directive confines of thatperspectival frame.

Wben we analyze Unear perspective as a key factor in exhibitions,several of Panofsky's observations prove crucial. Tbe first is that the"material surface" (I will say tbe putatively raw gaUery space) is"negated" by tbis "symboUc form" in order to make room for tbe"projection" of the "various objects" (lyncbing pbotograpbs and otbermaterials) wbicb wiU contribute to the iUusion of tbree-dimensionalspace and its total content. It seems significant, bowever, tbat in tryingto approximate tbree-dimensional space we assume or privilege tbefixed, one-dimensional position and stare of a single, ideal viewingsubject. Panofsky refers, in fact, to tbe "artificiaUty" of "natural"perspective. He also notes that these iUusions of "reaUty" depend on acentral vanisbing point and a borizontal Une drawn througb tbatvanisbing point. Tbese guideposts—and tbe Unes leading toward or awayfrom tbem—supply mechanisms of control, belping to construct a"psycbopbysiological space" of vision and cognition. Tbey do so in partby neutraUzing tbe natural effects of retinal distortion, by rigbtinginversions, by straigbtening concavities, etc. (27-31).

Panofsky's observations lead me to suggest tbis paradox:neutraUzation and correction, in tbis case tbe greater deptb-of-fieldacbieved at tbe N-YHS, can actuaUy dilute tbe force of tbe re-presentedhistorical moments. Perbaps tbe exhibition at Rotb Horowitz, in spite ofits minimal evidence of tbe anti-lyncbing counter-forces, was in fact as"reaUstic" (bistoricaUy accurate) as its successor at tbe New-YorkHistorical Society. Tbe carefuUy composed perspective of tbe N-YHSexhibition seems to have reoriented the lawless and ruthless space oflyncbing and replaced it with what Panofsky caUs rational"mathematical" space (31). That rational space was created when the N-YHS establisbed reciprocal relations between elements in thecomposition (relations between lyncbing and counter-movements) andidentified a central vanisbing point (the efficacy of resistance andultimate triumpb of humanity) in organizing tbe canvas (exbibit space).Witb tbese lines drawn, tbe curators could tben deUneate tbe reciprocalrelations between lynching and actions taken against lynching. CradyTurner, Director of Exhibitions at tbe time tbat Without Sanctuary-wasmounted at the N-YHS, remembers, in fact, that hope was the primary

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focus.* In effect, the N-YHS put "bope" at tbe vanisbing point byincluding buman efforts to stop the lawlessness and end the suffering.

The impulse to create order is fuUy interrogated by Hayden White in"The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality" (1980) as heanalyzes bow fidelity, rationality, and coberence are acbieved in verbalspaces of bistorical representation. White asks: "Wbat wish is enacted,what desire is gratified, by the fantasy that real events are properlyrepresented wben tbey can be sbown to display tbe formal coberency ofa story?" Furtbermore, be presses us to consider: "What kind of insightdoes narrative give into tbe nature of real events? What kind ofblindness witb respect to reality does narrativity dispel?" (4-5). In bisanalysis of the coherent, deliberate ordering of tbe verbal (ratber tbanvisual) bistorical landscape, Wbite notes an "increasing order ofmeaning" as bistorical genres evolved from "annals" to "cbronicles" andfinally to bistory "proper." Wbite suspects tbat "narrative in general,from tbe folktale to the novel, from the annals to the fully reaHzed'history,' has to do witb the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, moregenerally, authority" (13). He notes that, in stark contrast to thehistorical narrative, the annals form offers "only a list of events orderedin chronological sequence." Tbough it does have a sense of time, thisform has "none of tbe cbaracteristics tbat we normally attribute to astory: no central subject, no well-marked beginning, middle, and end, noperipeteia [reversal of fortunes], and no identifiable narrative voice."Using the Annals of Saint 6aZ/(dating from the eighth to tenth centuriesof the common era) as his example. White relates that events "seemmerely to have occurred"—the entries seem "paratactical and endless"and lack "rank" and "establisbed causation" (6-7). He finds tbat tbe"social system" tbat would "rank" events is "minimally present" in tbeAnnals, wbile "tbe forces of disorder, natural and human, the forces ofviolence and destruction . . . occupy the forefront of attention." These

'when I asked Grady Turner whether Without Sanctuaryh^d a vanishing point, heinitially said it did not; after thinking further during our conversation, he identified"hope" as the central orientation. Faith in the ongoing efficacy of re-presenting theseimages also prevails in the "Foreword" by Congressman John Lewis for the book ofphotographs and essays which was published just prior to the Roth Horowitz exhibition;Lewis states: "It is my hope that Without SanctuarywUl inspire us, the living, and as yetunborn generations, to be more compassionate, loving, and caring" (7). Lewis has beenan active member of the now successful movement to create the National Museum ofAfncan American History and Culture.

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accounts tend to deal "in qualities rather than agents, figiuing forth aworld in which things happen to people rather than one in which peopledo things" (10).

White observes that the chronicle is acknowledged as a "'higher' formof historical conceptualization . . . a mode of historiographicalrepresentation superior to the annals form" (16). In the chronicle there"is no justice, only force, or rather, only an authority that presents itselfas different kinds of forces" (20). The chronicle, "Hke the annals butunlike the history, does not so much conclude as simply terminate;typically it lacks closure, that summing up of the 'meaning' of the chainof events with which it deals that we normally expect from a well-madestory" (16). The chronicle is a "self-conscious fashioning activity"however, and therefore less objective than the annals, in part because itcreates a form—a "work of rhetoric" (18).

Given its lack of order, structure, and resolution, the "crude"annalistic nature of the Roth Horowitz presentation seemedirresponsible to some visitors and critics; evidently when the exhibition'ssubject is lawlessness—or arguably a law of misrule—this form ofpresentation may seem to compound or condone the events it re-presents. I would suggest that the annahstic Roth Horowitz exhibitappeared "not to moralize" and seemed to lack "self-consciousness"(White 14) while the New-York Historical Society exhibition, with its"fashioning" but not total enclosure of the history of lynching,approximated the form of the chronicle but hovered at the threshold ofthe full historical narrative.

With its coherency and fullness, the historical narrative, arguably averbal analogue to visual central or linear perspective, is a "symboUcform" which presents an ideal, highly manipulated, and decidedly not"real" space. In fact. White observes that the "value attached tonarrativity in the representation of real events arises out of a desire tohave real events display the coherence, integrity, ftillness, and closure ofan image of Hfe that is and can only be imaginary" (24). Despite itsdefault to strategies of fabrication, however, the "demand for closure inthe historical story is a demand . . . for moral meaning, a demand thatsequences of real events be assessed as to their significance as elementsof a moral drama." White urges us to agree and asks: "Has any historicalnarrative ever been written that was not informed not only by moralawareness but specifically by the moral authority of the narrator?" (21).

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This question might be modified by adding "curator" and "institution" toWhite's characterization of an authorial narrative voice, but I think weshould resist the easy assumption that "moral sensitivity" was absentfrom the Roth Horowitz exhibition.

White asks of both the annals and the chronicle whether their"failure to narrativize reaUty adequately" is a function of "their failure torepresent the moral under the aspect of the aesthetic" (25). I read thisquestion as a chaUenge, a call for us to think more deeply about thecomfort of aesthetic solutions, to consider that the aesthetic may be asubstitute or simulacrum—a comforting iUusion of moraUty andresponsibiUty. Perhaps when we take up the subject of lynching in anexhibition we wish to see it, and the victims, and the audience(including ourselves) in a different Ught: the Ught cast by central,three-dimensional perspective; the Ught cast by historical narrative; theUght cast by dialogue in and beyond pubUc programs and symposia.

White defers to Roland Barthes ("Structural Analysis" 119) to makea distinction between the mere nonnarrative copy of historical events(we might think of the raw annals form of the Roth Horowitz exhibit)and the historical narrative (perhaps the motive of the N-YHS), which"ceaselessly substitutes meaning for the straightforward copy of theevents recounted" (White 1-2). There were some anciUary materials(books, pamphlets, etc.) in the Roth Horowitz exhibit and James AUenwas often present to talk with visitors; but the absence of wall texts andlabels, and the absence of a narrative voice to supply context and perhapsoffer some level of hierarchical/lawful comfort to us in the midst of suchlawlessness, was often a source of negative critical (media) reception ofthe exhibition. Yet these missing pieces were rarely problematic forvisitors who bore witness in the comment books. Both the gaUery andthe Historical Society gave me access to these books and, after an initialreview, I have as yet found little difference between them regarding therange and nature of visitor reception. This suggests that individualvisitors do not make the same distinctions as, or share the aesthetic andethical judgments of, the critical estabUshment.'' Reactions most oftenrecorded were shock, horror, disbeUef, shame, and disavowal. Commonthemes included poUce brutaUty, the death penalty, the need to guard

A fuU analysis of visitor and critical reception deserves separate treatment; thediverse positions on each exhibition demonstrate appreciation, condemnation, andthoughtful reflection.

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against repetition, and the fact that everyone should see these lynchingimages.

Relatively few visitors commented on the materials added by theHistorical Society, with notable exceptions; a history teacher from NewYork City wrote: "Thank you for both showing me the horror and thecourage of those who stood up against it"; another New Yorker felt that

The N.Y. Historical Society is to be commended for curadng this exhibit, especiallyincluding the additional material from other institutions which puts the lynchingsin a historical context. It was important to include the activism that continued formany years Your inclusion of these special people added to the exhibition beingmore complete.

Yet the archive of responses also reveals that the Historical Society'sbroader context was still too narrow for some visitors, one of whomwanted attention to the history of lynching prior to 1880 and anotherwho sought greater attention to the value of tolerance. Reviewing andreacting to the N-YHS exhibit and its depth-of-field, Gregorio Malenawrote in Harlem Overheard (2001) that its "nonchalant pose"compromised a "powerful" yet "matter-of-fact" presentation.Interestingly he found that the exhibit was not directive enough: "Manypeople do not realize how powerful a medium an exhibit can be. It is theonly medium into which one can literally walk." He concluded thatWithout Sanctuary "did not have the power of an immersive exhibit"(12). Malena's disappointment may have been provoked by the "lack ofcongruity" between the meanings created by curators and the meaningsand expectations carried to an exhibition by each visitor. Incongruentexperiences may in fact be one of the key problems for therepresentation of history in museums, as Susan Crane has argued in"Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum." It is a good problem,however, since it speaks to the active "historical consciousness" of thevisitor, a key building block in the development of effectivere-presentation and active rather than passive reception.

In this context it is important to note Hayden White's observationson the genre of "historical narrative": the least objective and yet mostreassuring form, it displays "a formal coherency to which we ourselvesaspire." In contrast to the chronicle and certainly to the annals, thehistorical narrative "reveals to us a world that is putatively 'finished,'done with, over, and yet not dissolved, not falling apart. In this world.

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reality wears the mask of a meaning, the completeness and fullness ofwhich we can only imagine, never experience" (White 21). In our owntime this "fullness of meaning" is likely something we have been(academically) trained to distrust. Martin Kemp notes that the "reallyserious assaults on the value of [single-point] perspective" have comewith our general lack of helief in a "stable set of common features in ourrepresentation and perception of the world, in favour of a series ofrelative 'realities' perceived differently in different cultures according tosets of social and intellectual structures" (336). Thus an exhibition witha fixed, stable vanishing point is less likely to be well received by thosewith a relativist orientation toward the truth claims of conventionalhistories. However, the apparent lack of moralizing and lack ofinstitutional and aesthetic sacralization in the (archaic?) annals form,particularly if found in a gallery exhibition, also makes some visitorsuneasy; perhaps this is a resiilt of coming too close to the extremity oflynching and then finding the question of complicity harder to keep atbay.

As Dora Apel argues, the issue at stake today is complicity and "theresponsibility of historical witnessing" (459). When examining the RothHorowitz and N-YHS exhibitions, and subsequent exhibitions at theAndy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Martin Luther King, Jr.National Historic Site in Atlanta, Apel moves beyond the historical pastto the legacies and permutations of lynching. She claims that "Todaywhen we look at lynching photographs we try not to see them. Lookingand seeing become seeming forms of aggression that implicate theviewer, however distressed and sympathetic, in the acts that turnedhuman beings into horribly shamed objects" (457-58). Apel describes theAtlanta exhibition, where "nine glass cases were arrayed in the center ofthe room with antilynching works by black Harlem Renaissance writers"along with "three glass cases containing printed matter that representedthe most important elements of the antilynching movement" (463). Sherecalls a "subdued soundscape" that included the "sound of chirpingcrickets followed by cHps from four grieving black spirituals." These"black voices of lament," she notes, "provided a sense of blacksubjectivity that worked as a counterweight to the largely faceless blackcorpses and smug white mobs in the photos." Yet Apel also suggests thatby "providing a sanctuary in which to view the unspeakable, thesacrahzation of photographs of racist atrocity poses the potential

Tbe AAerli& of Lyncbing 211

problem of sacralizing the horror of lynching itself in a manner similarto the sacraUzation of the Holocaust by many Jews" (463, 472).

Tbe act of bearing witness can take many forms; no "ideal" formexists; no form can promise to bring every potential visitor to tbe brinkof etbical action. Perbaps the exposure to the paratactic / annalistic format the Roth Horovdtz exhibition and to tbe cbronicle, bordering on afuller historical narrative at the New-York Historical Society brougbt mecloser to bearing witness; perhaps one approach informed the other. Thetwo exhibitions have undoubtedly raised tbe bistorical consciousness ofmany visitors and tbey bave raised nagging questions about tbe relative"value of narrativity" (Wbite) and the "symbolic form" of centralperspective (Panofsky) in the representation of reality. How can anexhibition activate as well as re-compose bistory? How can an exhibitionrecognize tbe authority and claims of the past and effectively bear andconfer responsibihty in tbe present? How can the act of re-compositioncome to terms Jfcrwhile not claiming to come to terms with the afterhfeof trauma?

Cathy Caruth offers a "general definition" of trauma as "anoverwhelming experience of sudden, or catastrophic events, in whichthe response to the event occurs in the often delayed, and uncontrolledrepetitive occurrence of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena"(181). She emphasizes the "curious dynamics of trauma" and "distortion"as part of the process of memory. The problems of re-presenting tbosedynamics and respecting tbose distortions bear directly on tbe questionof incoherence as an integral part of museum displays; tbis is notsometbing to be managed but sometbing to be given due space and time.But wbat kind of space? Wbat manner of time? Carutb insists tbat "Forbistory to be a bistory of trauma means that it is referential precisely tothe extent that it is not fuUy perceived as it occurs" and "can be graspedonly in tbe very inaccessibiHty of its occurrence"(187). How, then, canwe begin to grasp tbe trauma to wbich lynching images testify and thetrauma experienced by tbe visitor to exhibitions such as those at RothHorowitz and the N-YHS?

While, for some, trauma is a "basic feature of consciousness," asMicbael Roth and Charles Salas explain, "for others, trauma underscoresthe inabihty of any representation to fully convey experience" (2). Tbeimplications of trauma studies for tbe re-presentation of human sufferingare quite serious since they call into question tbe potential of single-

212 Bettina M. CarboneU

point perspective (Panofsky) and historical narrative (White) to "conveyexperience." Roth and Salas go on to observe that "The recognition ofthis inability [the inability of representation] has led some historians andcritics to argue that the structural importance of trauma should reinforceour basic human and ethical obligation to hear one another out. Anopenness to testimony is seen as an ethical response to the fragility ofrepresentation and the woundedness of consciousness" (2). This leadsRoth and Salas to ask not only historiographical but museologicalquestions: "Do we construct our present and future by domesticatingthat extremity? Or do we find some mode of narrating, imagining,re-presenting those events that, at least to some extent, does theirextremity justice?" (3). Of course the problem of finding a form and aforum for witnessing "extreme events"—for witnessing the afterlife oflynching—is unresolved, and these questions lead me back to thequestion of composition or, as White puts it, "the content of the form."If the content is so severe, and so severely urgent as it is in the outrage,violence and inhumanity of lynching, it seems that we can take nochances. We want to carefully measure the ground, provide guidelines,avoid the replication of the outrage and avoid meeting it on its ownoutrageous and ultimately immeasurable grounds.

As I continue to encounter these lynching images I also turn back toSontag's piercing analysis of the "rhetoric" and ethics of photographicrecords and to Apel's review and meditation "On Looking." Sontagdirectly addresses the Roth Horowitz exhibition by asking, "What is thepoint of exhibiting these pictures?" (91). In the course of her responseshe proposes that we have a duty to look, but she makes it terribly clearthat looking is no simple matter. Apel addresses the ethics and aestheticsof looking in the context of the open-ended nature of racial violence inAmerica. Ironically, in terms of the afterlife of lynching and thedocumentation of those actions, I should note that I have not been ableto locate any "primary institutional" photographs of the New Yorkexhibitions: the Roth Horowitz gallery, contrary to their own norms,failed to take installation shots; it seems that some poorly lit slides weretaken at the New-York Historical Society, but they are not in theexhibition files. Some photos are obtainable from media coverage, andthey are valuable records of looking; however, they do not supply thesterile yet very useful view of the space as it is inhabited solely by itshistorical objects and appended narratives, if any.

The Añerliíe of Lynching 213

Having raised many questions, I will conclude not by offeringanswers but by looking toward a hybrid form of re-composition, a wayto "grasp" the trauma of history. I am thinking of the open or "visiblestorage" facilities at the New-York Historical Society, the MetropolitanMuseum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Although it is perhapsthe most static of exhibition modes, since objects are taken out of hiddenstorage and crowded into glass cases arrayed in closely packed rows,visible storage allows for an uncanny recirculation of history in thelifeworld of the viewer. I am also thinking of exhibitions hke Mining theMuseum, a collaboration between the Maryland Historical Society andthe Contemporary (Gallery) in Baltimore curated by Fred Wilson andLisa Corrin. These inventive developments make history visible bybringing objects and visitors together in sometimes stark, disturbingjuxtapositions. They often disobey the laws of genre by allowing"material culture" to reside with the "fine" and "decorative" arts. Theyoffer a three-dimensional space of documentation and accusation onslavery, race, and class relations and they preserve some open (notnegated) space for individuals to move toward interpretation and theassumption of responsibihty.

My general proposal involves the elaboration of temporaryexhibitions like AZif/27/7̂ cAe Äfu5eü/23, Witness, ^ná Without Sanctuaryin the more permanent yet fluid form of visible storage. With objects inclose and often provocative proximity (without a governing narrative)and with no gloss beyond a catalogue or accession number, visiblestorage permits visitors to create a personalized depth of field.'Searchable databases are accessible at the visitor's discretion, making itpossible for anyone to combine the most deUcate and the mostincendiary images and objects and, with a maximum degree of flexibihty,access the substantial scholarly historical "documentation." In this spacethe visitor may actively and interactively grasp objects, reach into thearchives, and construct a personal course of study.

*rhe facilities at the N-YHS are funded by The Henry Luce III Center for the Studyof American Culture; those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the BrooklynMuseum of Art are funded by The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art.

214 Bettina M. Carbonell

Works Cited

Allen, James, and John Littlefield et al. Without Sanctuary: LynchingPhotography in America. Santa Fe: Twin Palms, 2000.

Apel, Dora. "On Looking: Lynching Photographs and Legacies ofLynching after 9/11." American Quarterly 55."i (2003): 457-78.

Barthes, Roland. "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives."Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang,1977. 79-124.

Carbonell, Bettina M. "Where Does Violence Belong?: Memory,Museums, and the Institutional Re-Presentation of Human Suffering."Annual Conference of the American Studies Association. Hartford,CT. Oct. 17, 2003.

Caruth, Cathy. "Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility ofHistory." Yale Erench Studies 79 (1991): 181-92.

Crane, Susan. "Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum."History and Theoiy36 (1997): 44-63.

Desmond, Stewart. Undated planning memo. New-York HistoricalSociety exhibition files.

Duffy, Terence. "Museums of 'Human Suffering' and the Struggle forHuman Rights." Museum International53 (2001): 10-16.

Hulser, Kathleen. Personal interviews. 12 June 2003 and ongoing.Kemp, Martin. The Science ofArt: Optical Themes in Western Art Irom

Brunelleschi to Surrealism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.Krizner, L .J. Director of Education, New-York Historical Society.

Personal interview. 21 Aug. 2003.Lewis, John. Foreword. Without Sanctuary. Allen et al. 7.Malena, Gregorio. "Still Without Sanctuary." Harlem Overheard 4.17

(2001): 12.Markovitz, Jonathan. Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and

Memory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2004.Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Eorm. Trans. Christopher S.

Wood. New York: Zone Books, 1997.Roth, Andrew. Personal interviews. 5 June 2003 and 21 Jan. 2004.Roth, Michael S., and Charles G. Salas. Introduction. Disturbing

Remains: Memory, History, and Crisis in the Twentieth Century. Ed.Roth and Salas. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001. 1-13.

The AñerliSe of Lynching 215

Ruffins, Faith Davis. "Mythos, Memory, and History: African AmericanPreservation Efforts, 1820-1990." Museums and Communities. Ed.Ivan Karp et al. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution P, 1992.506-611.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Earrar, Straus,2003.

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. "The Senate Apologizes, Mostly." New York Times,19 June 2005, 4: 3.

Turner, Grady. Telephone interview. 23 July 2004.White, Hayden. "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of

Reality." The Content ofthe Form: Narrative Discourse and HistoricalRepresentation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. 1-25.

Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Exhibition atthe New-York Historical Society, New York, NY: March 14-Oct. 1,2000.

Witness: Photographs ofLynchings from the Collection of James Allenand John Littlefíeld. Exhibition at Roth Horowitz Gallery, New York,NY: Jan. 13-Feb. 12, 2000.