“Us Seeing the Exhibition” an exhibition catalog for All Things Being Equal… (2019)

“Us Seeing the Exhibition”, an Exhibition catalog for Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… at Portland Art Museum (2019)

The Harriet Tubman Middle School Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice are a group of middle school students from Harriet Tubman Middle School in NE Portland, OR who work together with Portland State University professors Lisa Jarrett and Harrell Fletcher to learn about and do curation in various forms. We were given the special opportunity to have a behind-the-scenes guided tour by Ella Ray who worked on the Hank Willis Thomas exhibition, All Things Being Equal..., at the Portland Art Museum. (They actually opened the museum for us because we meet on Mondays and the museum is closed on Mondays.)

This whole show is all about interpretation. Hank probably had an idea of how he expected you to interpret the work but you might interpret it the way your mind chooses. You might interpret this exhibit as a piece about slavery and rising up from it, or you might think it’s about taking brands off people that advertisements and media created. As you look at the pieces, try to find the deeper meaning of the work and maybe write it down like we did. We were surprised by so many themes in the show. For example, we had never thought about slavery and sports together. It was very impressive. Joyce said she thought about food to try to get the thoughts about slavery out of her head because in the pieces about slavery and sports Hank was trying to get you to figure out the connections. It was dark and depressing in a powerful way. Think about this as a viewer’s guide.

—Beatrice, Elliot, Esperanza, Harrell, Joyce, Lisa, Nora, and Syncier