The Afric-American Picture Gallery: William J. Wilson's Speculative Museum of Black Art

In The Afric-American Picture Gallery, Britt Rusert examines a work of periodical fiction by educator and activist William J. Wilson, an episodic series of experimental prose and biting satire that was published in 1859. It tells the tale of a flaneur character who takes readers on a virtual tour through an imagined gallery of Black art, long before any such museum existed in the United States. Rusert uses Wilson’s series as groundwork to formulate a theory and practice of Black aesthetics ...