Abstract

In summer 2018, U.S. vocal artists/superstars Beyoncé and Jay-Z released the video for their song “APESHIT,” which was filmed almost entirely in the galleries of the Museé du Louvre in Paris, France. In this paper we analyze the APESHIT music video through the lenses of Black Feminist Thought and post-critical museology and offer implications for art museum education. We position APESHIT as a form of autobiographical performative museum pedagogy (Garoian, 2001), as a critical mining of the dominant curatorial narratives inscribed in the galleries, and as an intervention intent on countering the erasure of Black women’s bodies in art museums. We identify three distinct ways in which Beyoncé and a troupe of professional mostly Black female dancers perform counternarratives in the Louvre galleries to disrupt longstanding, colonialist notions of power. Further, the video exemplifies the ways museums can play a central role in connecting history with the contemporary, as well as push narratives regarding social and racial positionings. We conclude by suggesting that APESHIT is a corrective to the longstanding “e-race-sure” of Black women’s bodies in art museums. This study speaks specifically to visitor diversity in the inclusive museum.

Presenters

Joni Acuff

Dana Carlisle Kletchka
Assistant Professor of Art Museum Education, Arts Administration, Education, & Policy, The Ohio State University, Ohio, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Visitors

KEYWORDS

Art Museum, Black Feminist Thought, Post-critical Museology, Performance Art, Counternarrative

Digital Media

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