Haitian Artwork On View Across South Florida

What do you know about Haiti?

Could you find it on a map? How about the official language? The country it shares a border with?

Are you aware of Toussaint l’Overture and the Haitian Revolution?

No doubt you’ve heard of Vodou, but do you have any idea what those spiritual traditions actually entail?

Chances are, what you hear about Haiti, is bad. Natural disasters. Violence.

A series of art exhibitions across Florida offer those interested in learning more a richer, nuanced view of the country.

“Everything Earth and Sky: An Exhibition of Haitian Art”

Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami

Through May 28, 2023

The Frost Art Museum houses one of the largest collections of Haitian paintings from the 1980’s and 1990’s in the United States. The effort was originally spearheaded by Dahlia Morgan, director of the Art Museum at FIU, forerunner to the Frost. The collection’s wide-ranging subject matter and number of artists provides a distinctive look at Haitian art from that period.

“I think the complex synthesis of particular places such as Cap-Haïtien and Port au Prince with intricate Vodou iconography make Haitian art distinctive from the artwork of other Caribbean nations,” Chief Curator of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU Amy Galpin told Forbes.com.

For “Everything Earth and Sky,” the museum collaborated with scholars in the area of Haitian art, eventually landing on a presentation focused on artists’ varied use of space. From schools, communal plazas, and government buildings to Haiti’s fauna and the ever-present ocean, works on view depict different interpretations of physical space and the use of public places.

“After observing the paintings for some time, we noticed the way people navigate space, outdoor space like mountains and water, or public space such as schools and city plazas, reoccurred in the works,” Galpin explained. “This gave us an opportunity to think about how space is navigated in Haiti and how the artists represented in the exhibition navigate space.”

The show includes works from the Frost’s permanent collection alongside those by seven contemporary artists of Haitian heritage living in the U.S.

“Cosmic Mirrors”

Nova Southeastern University Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale

May 26–August 6, 2023

Formed in the 1970s through a series of donations from Fort Lauderdale-based collectors frequenting Haiti and acquiring works there by some of the country’s most important artists, NSU Art Museum’s collection of Haitian art is distinguished by its reach back into history.

“NSU Art Museum is particularly fortunate to possess works spanning from the mid-twentieth century to today, whereas most other South Florida museum collections date from the 1980s,” NSU Art Museum’s Bryant-Taylor Curator Ariella Wolens told Forbes.com. “It encompasses the mid-twentieth century visionary paintings of Robert Saint-Brice, an impoverished Voudo priest (or houngan), as well as the cubistic and abstract paintings of Roland Dorcely who associated with Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam in Paris.”

Recent donations include major examples from master metalworker Serge Joulimeau. His workshop in Croix-des-Bouquets was instrumental in the country’s economic recovery after the 2010 earthquake when, through an arrangement with Macy’s, Joelimeau and other metalworkers sold their sculptures throughout the world.

Highlighting 27 artists, both celebrated and unknown, “Cosmic Mirrors” illuminates facets of Haiti’s political history and creative abundance through pieces spanning the 1950s to present day. Subjects include depictions of the nation’s founding along with representations of the country’s spiritual merger between colonial Catholic beliefs and Vodou cosmology, plus representations of the country’s lush terrain, romantically presented as a pastoral idyll.

“Western historical narratives tend to make little mention of Haiti; even the story of the Republic’s founding, the result of the only successful slave rebellion, is not commonly known. This lack of knowledge of Haitian history is often filled in by myth-making and cultural assumptions,” Wolens explained. “Vodou spiritual beliefs and practices have been particularly demonized and misrepresented. This exhibition offers general insight into the complex history of Vodou and the realities of Haitian life, which we hope will encourage viewers to further educate themselves on the subject.”

The exhibition’s title refers to the Haitian Vodou belief in a parallel universe, referred to as Laviloka or Afrik Ginen. This land is both real and divine, functioning as an inverse reflection of the physical world. This “cosmic sphere” is populated by the immortal spirits of the country’s African ancestors and spiritual divinities, and through spiritual ceremony, reaches into our own profane realm.

Haitian artwork is always front and center at the NSU Art Museum thanks to the prominent permanent installation of Edouard Duval-Carrié’s, The Indigo Room or Is Memory Water Soluble. This room-filling display focuses on themes of migration and memory and was created by the artist in 2004 along with the assistance of local students from Dillard Center for the Arts.

“Reframing Haitian Art: Masterworks from the Arthur Albrecht Collection”

Tampa Museum of Art

Through January 14, 2024

In 2022, the Tampa Museum of Art received a gift of 69 paintings, nine wooden sculptures and one print from the Arthur Albrecht Revocable Trust. Albrecht, a prominent San Francisco attorney, became enthralled with Haiti after visiting the nation, amassing a large collection of Haitian artworks, historical maps and rare books on Haitian history.

Upon his 2018 death, Albrecht’s Estate sought out a proper home for the items.

By this time, the Tampa Museum of Art had been collecting Haitian objects for more than 20 years, those efforts going into high gear in 2019 with a gift of twenty-one Haitian flags by collectors Ed and Ann Gessen. In 2022, members of the museum’s Haitian Art Society brought the Albrecht Collection to the attention of TMA Executive Director Michael Tomor and a match was made.

“The Albrecht Collection features never-before-seen paintings by Haiti’s master artists including Rigaud Benoit, Préfète Duffaut, Jasmine Joseph, Philomé Obin, Sénèque Obin, Salnave Philippe-Auguste, and André Pierre,” Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tampa Museum of Art, told Forbes.com. “From depictions of revered Vodou deities and fantastical tropical landscapes, to bustling town centers and picturesque villages, the artists featured in the Albrecht Collection portray Haiti as home and paradise.”

Due to their fragile condition, Albrecht’s Haitian paintings were rarely, if ever, on loan or on view to the public. The paintings suffered from various levels of grime, accretions, staining and more in-depth concerns such as lifting paint and punctures or tears, as well as framing issues. With grant funds from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, TMA was able to clean and restore the collection nearly to the objects’ original condition allowing them to be displayed.

With the substantial gift of works from the Albrecht Collection, in addition to its growing collection of Haitian flags which now numbers nearly 150–one of the largest of its kind in the United States–the Tampa Museum of Art is among the premier institutions dedicated to collecting art from Haiti and the Caribbean at large.