Editors’ Introduction

“I TSTARTED with a cabinet.” These words introduce the digital version of an exhibition, “Truths of the Trade: Slavery and the Winterthur Collection,” curated by graduate students in theWinterthurProgram inAmericanMaterialCulture taught by Catharine Dann Roeber and in the University of Delaware’s Department of Art History taught by Jennifer Van Horn during the 2017–18 academic year. The temporary onsite exhibition and the later digital component (http://truthsofthetrade .winterthur.org) centered on an object with a deeply troublinghistory: aneighteenth-century double cabinet once used to house business records, correspondence, and accounts related to transatlantic trade including the sale of captive peoples of African descent (fig. 1). The place names—Senegambia, Madeira, Philadelphia (barely legible), Jamaica, Leeward Islands, North Carolina, Waterford, Bristol, Teneriffe, and Gold Coast—and business record and supply labels emblazoned on its drawers, suggest that unidentified users—likely merchants, ship captains, or clerks—kept insurance and administrative papers related to the slave trade within the furniture form (fig. 2). The online version continues the work of the onsite exhibition, inviting viewers to question how objects in Winterthur’s museum and library collections reveal the fundamental interrelationships betweenenslavement, racism, andcommerce. Through exploration of individual artifacts (in museum labels and object videos), the students reveal how pro-