The Past in Front of Us: Imagining Black Diasporas in the 21st Century seeks aesthetic connections between Black artists working around the world today. This project prioritizes aesthetic perception and affect in relation to Black Diasporic studies and reimagines the canon of work by Black artists. This project does not relegate aesthetics to surface or formal analyses, but understands aesthetic motifs as intelligent entities which communicate the experience of existence. This project affirms Black Diaspora as a dynamic imaginary. I extend traditional analyses of Black Diaspora from the continental edges of the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. I look horizontally and create juxtapositions between artists working in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. I use transdisciplinary terms from art history, psychoanalysis, semiotics, philosophy, rhetoric, trauma theory, and critical race studies. Analyses build on multiple discourses because Black Diaspora is a mutable concept that shifts and evolves. This project is one of the first investigations of twenty-first century artistic production by Black artists globally. Until now, these artists’ work has been covered primarily in magazines, exhibition catalogues, and art reviews in the popular press. Chapters, organized by themes rather than regions, focus on emerging artists Dannielle Bowman, Sandra Brewster, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Kambui Olijimi, and Frida Orupabo. In addition, this thesis contributes a new theoretical frame to existing scholarship on artists Sammy Baloji, Sanford Biggers, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon, and Cauleen Smith. As a speculative work, this thesis articulates a vocabulary and uncovers a multitude of aesthetic connections between art practices globally. A significant component of this work is to foreground Black artists’ historically sidelined insights about being in the world.

During the Nazi era, which is historically regarded as lasting from 1933-1945, the National Socialists both looted and made “legal” confiscations of art and artifacts they deemed “degenerate” from museums throughout occupied Europe. The art they seized was sold abroad in exchange for foreign currency that not only funded their war efforts, but also allowed for purchases of art for Hitler’s un-realized Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. The rapid transfer of objects flooded the art market, making this period one of the most prosperous times for collectors and dealers. However, due to the overall hasty nature of the displacements, the ownership history, or provenance, of the works became extremely convoluted. Institutions in the United States, as well as individual collectors, began to buy pieces, unaware of their provenance. Without this knowledge as a good-faith purchaser, many institutions never delved deeper into the background of the objects and the works remained in their collections until the present day. In this thesis, I argue that provenance research can shape a museum’s history through changing the relationship it has with its permanent collection. Insight into the ownership history of the collection must be made a priority in order for museums to remain transparent with their visitors, thus allowing for perceived notions of exclusivity, or distrust, to be eliminated. I researched two institutions, the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Krannert Art Museum, which recently examined their own holdings for incomplete attributions, with one establishment conducting a study after it became enmeshed in public scrutiny generated by a controversial bequest. Lastly, I employ both art historical scholarship and legal resources to investigate how provenance can be more widely used as a valuable asset in an increasingly globalized society.