AFA 22nd Anniversary

22nd Anniversary 82 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976), Rich Black Specimen #460, 2017. Aluminum with powder coat and automotive paint, 75 x 47½ inches. Museum purchase, made possible by the Elizabeth Rogers Acquisition Fund (2019.23.1AB). Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Hank Willis Thomas’ figure, ultrathin and larger than life, jumps from the archival pages into our sights. In the nineteenth century, stock books presented small printed imagery, or specimens, for sale to publishers for use in broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers. Thomas based his sculpture on an image from an 1859 book, Specimens of Printing Types, recreating printing specimen number 460 of a “runaway slave.” A rainbow effect, that Thomas describes as “an aura or spiritual glow,” from the process of scanning the original book, highlights and animates the figure. Slipping through time, the figure forces us to reckon with his humanity and our own histories. Dressing chest, Thomas Seymour (1771–1848), carving attrib- uted to Thomas Wightman (Active 1797–1817), about 1810. Mahogany, bird’s-eye maple, satinwood veneer, brass, and glass. H. 73½, W. 45, D. 25 in. Gift of Miriam and Francis Shaw Jr., 1935 (122350). Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. The apartments are finished in as good order as any I have seen. The furniture was rich but never violated the chastity of correct taste. — Reverend William Bentley Elizabeth Derby West was the independent-minded daughter of America’s first millionaire Elias Hasket Derby. She was one of the richest women in America when she divorced ship captain Nathaniel West in 1806, a rare occurrence during the period. Living in her Oak Hill mansion west of Salem, she commissioned the most luxurious furnishings and decorations in fashionable neoclassical style from the best craftsmen in Salem and Boston. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, elaborate dressing tables were popular with wealthy women in the new nation. Such tables symbolized civility and refinement, as well as intimacy, as the place where a woman prepares herself to face the world.