Undertone #17, #23, #51, from the series Undertones

This object was selected for the collection as part of the undergraduate course "Collecting|Critique: Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts?

These fragmented images of artist Myra Greene’s nose, lips, and eyes are deliberately spaced on a small shelf to create a self-portrait. The images are rendered as ambrotypes, a photographic technique that produces images on glass. Ambrotypes were often used during the 19th century to document the physical features of enslaved people in a pseudoscientific effort to predict their behavioral tendencies. The artist’s use of this medium, here on colored glass, speaks to the history of race and photography. The stained glass interacts with light, revealing different colored undertones to create a dynamic representation of Black skin. The specificity of its medium ties this contemporary work to the historical period of American slavery. Greene invites us to meditate on questions of Black subjectivity from both past and present contexts.

Students enrolled in "Collecting|Critique: Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts?" seminar (Spring 2020):

Samantha Baldwin ’21, Art History and Journalism
Lois Biggs ’20, Art History and Comparative Literary Studies
Cooper Brovenick ’20, Art History and Economics
Meghan Clare Considine ’20, Art History and Performance Studies
Ela Dayanikli ’20, Communication Studies
Zoe Detweiler ’20, Art History and Journalism
Kathleen Dewan ’20, Materials Science and Engineering
Vitoria Monteiro de Carvalho Faria ’23, Art History and Economics
Brianna Heath ’21, Art History
Wenke (Coco) Huang ’22, Art History and Performance Studies
Mina Pembe Malaz ’21, Art History and Psychology
Joely Simon ’21, Journalism and Art History

Read and download an essay from the exhibition publication Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts: Thinking about History with The Block's Collection: "Students Discuss Collecting - Myra Greene, Undertone #17, #23, #51 from the series Undertones, 2017–18," (2021)