HESCAH Lecture | Dr. Meredith Martin “Remapping the "Paris" Art World in Haiti/Saint-Domingue”

“Remapping the “Paris” Art World in Haiti/Saint-Domingue”
Dr. Meredith Martin, Professor of Art History, New York University

This talk explores deep, mostly unknown connections between the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and the production and consumption of art in Paris in the decade preceding the French and Haitian Revolutions. It focuses on Saint-Domingue plantation owners who were also major figures in the Paris art world, including several prominent artists, architects, patrons, and collectors. Using relevant case studies, it explores the larger implications of these connections for research, teaching, and museum display, while also discussing a collaborative project to map this colonial network and, in so doing, to profoundly shift prevailing views of the eighteenth-century art world.