Join co-curators Ethelene Whitmire and Leslie Anne Anderson and scholars Denise Murrell and Tamara J. Walker as they expand on the various themes, artistic output, and shared histories on view in the exhibition Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century, presented at Scandinavia House until Saturday, March 8th, 2025.
Nordic Utopia? looks at the significance of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden as destinations for African American cultural figures including Ronald Burns, Doug Crutchfield, Herb Gentry, Dexter Gordon, William Henry Johnson, Howard Smith, and Walter Williams through a range of artifacts, artworks (music, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles), and documentary evidence (photography, film, and journalistic writing).
In this conversation, the curators and scholars will discuss notable works, stylistic influences, and the undertold stories of various African American artists who sought new possibilities, inspiration, and environments in the Nordic countries in the 20th century.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Ethelene Whitmire is a professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She’s a former American Scandinavian Foundation and Fulbright fellow at the University of Copenhagen. She has published an essay, “Looking for the Restless Soul of Nella Larsen in Copenhagen,” in the New York Times travel section and her book manuscript, The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram, is under contract with Viking Books at Penguin Random House. She is the author of Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian.
Leslie Anne Anderson is Chief Curator at the National Nordic Museum. Since 2019, she has overseen the Museum’s collections, exhibitions, and program functions. Leslie has developed major exhibitions with Sweden’s Nationalmuseum and Finland’s National Gallery; commissioned new work from Jónsi—vocalist for the world-famous band Sigur Rós—and organized his first art exhibition at a US museum, as well as the first-ever exhibition of his Fischersund Art Collective; and she co-curated Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century with Ethelene Whitmire and co-edited the catalogue of the same name.
Denise Murrell is the Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large, Office of the Director, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She curated The Met’s 2024 exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism and was the editor of its catalogue. Previous exhibitions include Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Now, in 2018/19 at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, and its expansion as Le modèle noir de Géricault à Matisse (The Black Model from Géricault to Matisse), in 2019 at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Denise has taught art history at Columbia University in New York and in Paris and has lectured and published extensively in the US and Europe on the art of the 19th through 21st centuries. She received a PhD in art history in 2014 from Columbia University.
Tamara J. Walker is an historian, writer, and nonprofit founder with wide-ranging interests. Her first book, Exquisite Slaves: Race Clothing and Status in Colonial Lima, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 and won the 2018 Harriet Tubman Prize from the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture. More recently, she has been focusing on the theme of global Black mobility. She is the author of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (which was published by Crown in 2023 and was a New York Time Book Review Editor’s Choice), as well as several related essays in Time’s Made by History vertical, Smithsonian Magazine, and The Guardian. In addition to working on several new book projects including the biography of a mysterious Black pirate, Tamara is also the co-founder of The Wandering Scholar, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that makes international travel accessible to high schoolers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Photo of Denise Murrell courtesy of Eileen Travell, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.