Three young women of color arrange themselves in front of Mickalene Thomas’s painting, “Le dejeuner sur l’herbe: Les trois femmes noires” at Seattle Art Museum. The massive, 10-by-24-foot mixed-media piece is Thomas’s take on a famous painting by Édouard Manet, “Le dejeuner sur l’herbe,” wherein two clothed white men, a naked white woman, and a partially clothed white woman are having a messy picnic in the woods.
A group of mostly white people watch the young women and start snapping photos. I pause to direct the women’s poses to match the three African American women in Thomas’s painting. Then I snap a photo, too. Though it was a casual moment, it occurs to me as I walk away that I didn’t explicitly ask their permission first. What right do I have to tell these women what to do?
I cringe to think how often unconscious performances of white entitlement (like what I did) may play out among museumgoers at Figuring History. And also, how many people of color will be sought out by white people to “help them understand the work.” So a special note to white people attending this show (and a note to self, too): Don’t be an entitled asshole. Don’t step into conversations you haven’t been invited into. And don’t snap pics unless you’ve been asked to.