with Christopher Steiner, Lucy C. McDannel ’22 Professor of Art History and Anthropology, Connecticut College

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In this illustrated lecture and gallery talk, Dr. Christopher Steiner situates Renee Cox’s The Signing (2018), into the broader context of her photographic series “Flipping the Script.” In the early 1990s, Renee Cox began to reinterpret canonical works of Western art by introducing Black characters as principal subjects — including The Pieta (1994), where she poses as the Virgin Mary, and Yo Mama’s Last Supper (1996), in which she presides as a nude, female Christ. The Signing, a monumental 12-foot-long photograph reinterprets Howard Chandler Christy’s historical painting Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by replacing the white Founding Fathers with 32 Black models, some in 18th-century costumes and others in contemporary African clothing.

Image: Renee Cox, Born 1960, Colgate, Jamaica; active New York, NY, The Signing (detail), 2018, printed 2022. Inkjet print, 73 × 213.4 cm (28 3/4 × 84 in.) Courtesy of the artist

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Object Lessons in American Art is organized by the Princeton University Art Museum.

This exhibition is made possible by the leadership support of the Terra Foundation for American Art.

At the Florence Griswold Museum, support comes from the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, HSB, The Aeroflex Foundation, The David T. Langrock Foundation, Mrs. Kathryn Parsons and Mr. J. Geddes Parsons, Mr. Wayne Harms and Mrs. Barbara Harms, WSHU Public Radio, as well as donors to the Museum’s Annual Fund.

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