Money,museums, and memory: cultural patronage by black voluntary associations

While the middle- and upper-class is typically cast as using museum patronage to support narratives that reinforce the position of dominant racial groups, this paper presents an alternative perspective. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data, I conceptually and empirically elaborate how gifts by black middle- and upper-class voluntary organizations to African American museums are enabled by racial uplift ideology and directed at nurturing counter-narratives about African Americans. As patrons of memory they aim to reconstitute recollections of African Americans by challenging master narratives of national life where they are either absent or marginalized. Gifts to black museums also support the inclusion of their own organizations and members as protagonists in this counter-memory. By turning attention to cultural patronage among black middle- and upper-class voluntary organizations, this paper demonstrates how museum patronage among elites can unsettle, rather than reinforce, master racial narratives.