Ota Benga

Inscriptions

Carved, in wooden base: “I’m the one who left, and didn’t come back.”; cast initials, CM [Caspar Meyer] on collar of bust; cast inscription, on front of base: "PYGMY"

Label

Fred Wilson’s groundbreaking work stems from his radical institutional critique of museum practice. His process raises difficult questions about museums’ collecting and display practices. In 2004/5 he carried out a similar endeavor with the Hood’s collection. During his two visits, he explored the museum’s storage area and developed a multipart exhibition based on the objects he found there. One group of objects included a set of plaster busts of ethnographic types.

Among these busts was Pygmy, a work by sculptor Caspar Mayer, a creator of casts and dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The bust depicted Ota Benga, a man who was exhibited around the United States, first at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904, and at the Bronx Zoo, New York, in 1906. He committed suicide in 1916 because of the psychological trauma of this dehumanizing experience.

In 2008, three years after his Hood installation, Wilson created this bronze bust, which the museum subsequently acquired. The reappropriated image of Ota Benga keeps alive his harrowing experience in the United States during the consolidation of Jim Crow laws and at the height of colonialism in his native Congo.

From the 2019 exhibition Global Contemporary: A Focus on Africa, curated by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Curator of African Art

Course History

FREN 7, French Graphic Novels, Annabelle Cone, Spring 2013

ENVS 80, Writing Our Way Home: The Writing That Sustains Us, Terry Tempest Williams, Spring 2013

SOCY 7.2, Race and Ethnicity, Emily Walton, Spring 2014

SOCY 7.1, Race and Ethnicity, Emily Walton, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, On Poor Taste, William Boyer, Winter 2015

AAAS 67.5, GEOG 21.01, Black Consciousness and Black Feminisms, Abigail Neely, Winter 2019

ARTH 89.05, Art History: Theory and Method, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Fall 2019

ARTH 89.05, Art History: Theory and Method, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Fall 2019

HIST 2, #EverythingHasAHistory, Matthew Delmont and Max Fraser - OPEN HOURS, Fall 2019

HIST 2, #EverythingHasAHistory, Matthew Delmont and Max Fraser 2, Fall 2019

HIST 2, #EverythingHasAHistory, Matthew Delmont and Max Fraser, Fall 2019

PHIL 23.01, Ethics and the Arts, Kenny Walden, Winter 2020

ENGL 62.22/AAAS 88.11, Atlantic Slavery to Atlantic Freedom, Alysia Garrison, Winter 2021

WRIT 03.05, US History, Immigration, and Native Peoples, Douglas Moody, Winter 2021

WRIT 03.05, US History, Immigration, and Native Peoples, Douglas Moody, Winter 2021

AAAS 88.19, Contemporary African-American Artists, Michael Chaney, Summer 2021

SOCY 2.01, Social Problems, Kristin Smith, Winter 2022

Art History 63.02, Why Are Museums...?, Mary Coffey, Winter 2023

Philosophy 23.01, Ethics and the Arts, Kenneth Walden, Winter 2023

Sociology 2.01, Social Problems, Kristin Smith, Winter 2023

Philosophy 23.01, Ethics and the Arts, Kenneth Walden, Fall 2023

Studio Art 21.01, Studio Art 73.01, Sculpture II, Sculpture III, Matt Siegle, Winter 2024

Exhibition History

Fred Wilson, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, California, February 4-March 31, 2012.

Global Contemporary: A Focus on Africa; Dorothy and Churchill Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-December 8, 2019.

Word and Image in Contemporary Art, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 26-August 4, 2013.

Provenance

Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, California; sold to present collection, 2012.

This record is part of an active database that includes information from historic documentation that may not have been recently reviewed. Information may be inaccurate or incomplete. We also acknowledge some language and imagery may be offensive, violent, or discriminatory. These records reflect the institution’s history or the views of artists or scholars, past and present. Our collections research is ongoing.

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