Statues of Our Past

I must admit, I am a little bit of a history nerd. It’s just so… captivating. For this reason my favorite museum in all of Chicago is The Field Museum of Natural History. All around the museum they house many statues of people and animals. A large amount of these works of art are of African peoples. And I don’t mean modern Africans, but of pre-westernized Africans.

            I have never given these statues much thought. They were just old works of art that could have dated back to 1893 when the museum was founded as a part of the worlds fair. But in class on Friday we talked about how African people use to be depicted as more primitive then those of lighter skin.

We looked at picture artist drew comparing and contrasting those of the chocolate complexion verses those of the sugar complexion. Usually the black people were drawn too look more like a monkey or a gorilla then a human while the white people looked normal.

            It then hit me, the statues in the Field museum seemed to depict the Africans of looking like a primate. For example, a statue of a woman and her child. The mother in the picture is carrying her child on her back, a pose more famous for how a gorilla carries a baby.

            Another statue is that of a man holding a chicken. They way that that a human would normally sit is to be cross-legged or to at least have their feet sprawled out in front of them. Well apparently not this guy. His stance is more similar to how a gorilla would sit.

            I am not saying that the Field Museum is racist in anyway. After all they do have a permanent exhibit on modern-day Africa that is extremely insightful for person who has never left North America. I am actually saying that displaying these statues is kinda cool. These statues represent a dark part of our history that we can’t neglect, therefore we shouldn’t neglect.  Having these statues shows us that there was a point in time when our white ancestors were so dimwitted that they thought that our black ancestors were less evolved. Knowing this is just as important as knowing that people use to believe the world was flat.

            By knowing now that we all are one in the same shows that we are slowly evolving into a more excepting, less cocky, and intelligent species.