Complicit Material Culture

Abstract

Should all historic artifacts owned or utilized by enslavers bear some responsibility for their actions? This case study of a portrait miniature of George Washington and its remarkable journey through Revolutionary War–era Brooklyn argues that perhaps they should. This study unpacks the direct role that this object—while not a direct artifact of slavery or of the slave trade—played in perpetuating the enslavement of Black Brooklynites following the war and the responsibility that museums bear today to grapple with the ugly truth of “complicit material culture” in future object reinterpretation projects.