Laocoön in the Tropics

Abstract

In 1862, the Brazilian Imperial Academy of Fine Arts received a damaged cast of The Laocoön Group. An intimate relationship between European academic tradition and the trafficking and compulsory labor of Black bodies unfolded. This contribution looks at the Academy, among several public institutions founded during the Brazilian empire (1822–89), that sustained, and were sustained by, the Atlantic’s largest and most enduring slave society. Special attention goes to the Academy’s entanglements with illegally-trafficked Africans apprenticed to royally-chartered institutions of culture. Through 1865, these Africans were active in the day-to-day operations of the Academy, where they were tasked with direct work with art objects. These Africans also worked to shape the contours of bondage and freedom inside the institution. The essay centers Black bodies and Blackness as constitutive actors in the institutionalization of the academic tradition in Brazil, and globalizes the recovery of the entwined histories of the transatlantic trade, academies, and museums.