Jessica S. Hong ’09

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I came to this field accidentally. After attending a high school that was sociopolitically engaged, I arrived at Barnard with an interest in studying political science. To fulfill a requirement, I took an art history survey that altered my trajectory. I realized then that the arts entwine the social, the political, and the cultural — and have relevance and influence on our everyday lives. However, it is also at Barnard that I recognized the limitations of this field and what narratives, experiences, and even material have been excised from the dominant, Western-centric art scholarship in which it is still rooted.

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At the Toledo Museum of Art, a new generation of curators (alongside colleagues far and wide) is actively contending with the colonial legacies of museological practice. Committed to thoughtfully broadening the collection, I recently acquired the work Rama (1982) by artist Pacita Abad. Throughout her global travels, Abad would engage and learn directly from local practitioners to incorporate a range of visual and cultural traditions primarily from the Global South. This is most notable in her trapunto paintings — padded and stitched canvases — from the late 1970s and early 1980s.

After her first visit in 1983 to Indonesia, she was inspired by the Ramayana tales — a popular Sanskrit epic from ancient India — as performed through the ancient tradition of wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppetry). In this work, part of her “Masks and Spirits” series (1981-2001), Abad depicts Rama, a central figure in the Ramayana tales and one of the most widely worshipped Hindu deities, by stitching together ikat, batik, and other textiles found at local Indonesian markets and painting with vibrant, dynamic colors on top. 

Long relegated to the margins, Abad is finally gaining broader recognition and weaves together traditions, techniques, objects, time periods, and cultural contexts, as her work embodies the interconnected world in which we live.

Each acquisition, as seen with Abad’s Rama, helps shape and reshape the contours of an institutional collection. As a result, the institution will continue to change as long as we remain responsible, rigorous, and intentional stewards.