In Praise of Famous Men No More, Museum of Natural History

Nona Faustine

Part of the Recent Acquisition Highlights

“I think, as an artist, our jobs are to ask the hard questions.” Nona Faustine

History fascinates, and motivates Faustine; in particular, the monuments and myths of American history—the very ones rooted in racism—that still dictate the framing of American identity and pride. Faustine’s family history has a direct line to African enslavement. Inherent to Faustine’s practice is not only paying tribute to the suffering of her own ancestors, but also to the status of African Americans in their own country, especially vis-a-vis the commemoration of their contributions to this nation’s history and society, which, until recently, have at best been grossly ignored, and at worst stolen and absorbed into white narratives as their own. Faustine’s series looks at America’s monuments and how history is celebrated and, she says, “how history is turned around. What is left out, what is included, what are the lies. And, who gets celebrated.”

In the work In Praise of Famous Men No More, Museum of Natural History, is depicted the statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside New York’s American Museum of Natural History, New York. Roosevelt is presented on horseback, flanked by both an African man and an Indigenous chief. Through her camera’s focus on an element in front of the statue, Faustine slashes the scene with a thick red line, which, to her, represents the erasure of African American history embedded in America’s most iconic monuments. That statue was vandalized during the “Decolonize This Place” protests, which partially inspired Faustine, but also partially tripped her. “I go back and forth. Even as a descendent of enslaved people. It is very hard, because this stuff has been ingrained in us. We have been taught to think a certain way about our country and our presidents. But when I look at the statue, it does bother me that they are below him.” The statue has since been removed.