The expansion of Black African objects into white western art spaces at the turn of the nineteenth century is less about Black people gaining rights and recognition and more about using Blackness as spectacular visual propaganda. Black African objects in popular culture during this time appear in Victorian salons, galleries and museums, as well as in public spectacles, theatres, fairs, zoos, and advertisements. The Victorians were obsessed with the occult, ghosts, and magic, and they thought Black African objects were ritually connected to these spooky things. White people’s narratives of horror and primitiveness, coupled with images of Blackness, created and reinforced negative stereotypes about Black people, especially black people who were not stolen from Africa and remained at a distance across an ocean or a zoo fence.

In this atmosphere, and with the coming of the first great war of the twentieth century, Black African objects began to circulate in galleries and museums in the US. Not all Black scholars embraced these objects as art, but they recognised art as something Black people in the US needed to create. White people mainly took up Black African objects. Black people in the US often wanted to distance themselves from ideas of ‘primitive Stone Age’ Black Africans. The unfavourable ideas about Black Africa were firmly attached to the histories that white colonialists wrote based either on their own experiences or what others told them. These histories created an interest in Black Africa as a dangerous place full of strange people and animals: Black Africa was described as wild, and the people as superstitious and stupid.

Bad Histories

In the late 1800s, the average person’s contact with Africa came from adventure tales that white colonials wrote after travelling across Black Africa. Most of the explorers did not speak any of the local languages and assumed the people were all low IQ, violent and uncontrollably sexual. Many accounts described how the white colonials were considered gods by the local populations or how the local populations were cannibals and wanted to eat them. Many colonials collected objects that returned home to be displayed at museums, exhibition halls, and fairs. The objects frightened and titillated the public. Stories of witchcraft and cursed objects helped drum up even more public interest.