Africans first stepped onto the soil of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, and this event's quincentenary occasioned considerable scholarly and social reflection. Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum's commemoration featured the exhibition Afterlives of the Black Atlantic. In it, the Atlantic served as a pathway connecting continents and centuries, artworks riding its thematic currents. This global approach was an ambitious program for a small institution, particularly when it relied primarily on its own collection. However, the Allen's extraordinary holdings (over 14,000 international artworks) enabled a thought-provoking display of numerous remarkable objects, primarily from the United States, Cuba, and Haiti, with a few inclusions from Africa and Europe. The exhibition's multivalent choices permitted reflections about the complexities of the topic, ranging from sugar and liquor's place in historical commodification and labor to the reincarnation of Old World deities in the Americas to the rocking of boats both literal and figurative.
The curators—Andrea...