Frederick Douglass Comes To Life at the VMFA

by Charles McGuigan 02.2023

Isaac Julien’s “Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass”, now at the VMFA, could not have arrived at a more opportune moment. 

Consider the revisionist history Virginia’s current superintendent of public education is foisting on our youth. Of the 400-page standards document she presented, here’s what Dr. James J. Fedderman, president of the Virginia Education Association, had to say: “The standards are full of overt political bias, outdated language to describe enslaved people and American Indians, highly subjective framing of American moralism and conservative ideals, coded racist overtures throughout, requirements for teachers to present histories of discrimination and racism as ‘balanced’ ‘without personal or political bias’, and restrictions on allowance of ‘teacher-created curriculum’, which is allowed in all other subject areas.”

In a word, it’s a whitewash.

This sort of doctored history is what prevents us from learning from our past. After all, history is not simply about our progress as a nation; it is also about the hideous crimes of our past—things like the genocide of native people, and the enslavement of Africans and their descendants. Ignoring these sins against humanity makes it easier for us to repeat them. 
Every teacher in Virginia ought to take every student in the Commonwealth to see this inspired installment, a perfect antidote to the watered down version of history the state is trying to ram down the throats of our young. 

 Sir Isaac Julien, a London-born artist and auteur, created this captivating installation which features a total of ten flat screen TVs—from the fairly small to the extremely large. For a full 25 minutes the viewer is bombarded with images and sounds that bring to life this man Frederick Douglass who was as much a Founding Father as Thomas Jefferson. 

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery to become one of the greatest orators and political writers this country has ever produced. He was a vocal activist for abolition and women’s suffrage, and would become the most photographed human being of the 19th century.  

Frederick Douglass is portrayed by Ray Fearon in fragmented montage-like scenes that are woven together with spoken words and still images, along with modern film clips that illustrate the ongoing struggles for racial equity in this country. It is a dizzying and spell-binding array of words and images that penetrate the densest of skulls to tell the true history of our Republic. 

A little over 1,800 years ago the great Greek writer Lucian penned the following about the qualities necessary for a good historian: “He must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty. A just judge, a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.”

Meaning the good, the bad, and downright ugly. You know, things like slavery, and the persistence of racism in the very structure of our society—something like a state-sanctioned history that denies our darkest moments when we failed to uphold the promises of our democracy. 

This free exhibit runs through July 9.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 

200 North Arthur Ashe Boulevard

Richmond, VA 23220

(804) 340-1400