Latin America is generally understood as the North, Central, and South American and Caribbean nations where languages derived from Latin, such as Spanish, Portuguese and French, are predominantly spoken. This concept reflects the shared colonial heritage of this region.
The modern Republic of Haiti is located on Hispaniola, the most populous island in the Caribbean Sea. This land was home to indigenous peoples long before seafaring European explorers began crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Here and throughout Latin America, Pre-Columbian civilizations had developed sophisticated culture for millennia.
In the late-15th and early-16th centuries, Europeans arrived seeking new land and trading opportunities. For the next 300 years, Spanish, Portuguese, and French interests colonized large parts of the Western Hemisphere and imposed European artistic conventions onto existing traditions. Millions of native inhabitants in Latin America were conquered or killed during this territorial expansion, succumbed to newly introduced diseases, or were brutally subjugated in the pursuit of natural resources. As this human toll inevitably dwindled the indigenous workforce, colonial powers satisfied the demand for free labor by forcibly importing millions of enslaved Africans to participate in military expeditions and work in the fields and mines. The men and women of this diaspora introduced their own unique visual language and contributed African cultural elements to the New World.
A revolutionary fire swept the region during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, stoked in part by the American and French Revolutions, and the people of Latin America began fighting for independence from colonial rule. The Haitian Revolution, led by enslaved people and free people of color, saw France’s wealthiest colony, Saint Domingue, force the abolition of slavery and become the world’s first Black-led republic in 1804. This reverberated throughout the Americas. While many Latin American nations were decolonized within those first tumultuous decades of the 19th century, others did not gain independence until the 20th century, and some remain non-sovereign territories. Though much of post-colonial Latin America has often been defined by inequality, internal strife, and foreign intervention, hope persists.
In the late 1940s, Winslow Anderson, the first full-time glass designer at Blenko Glass Company in Milton, West Virginia, began traveling into the swirling currents of this complex history. Anderson was moved by the colorful, joyous, and expressive nature of Haitian art, and from 1948 until about 1989, he made annual trips to the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince. There he developed a lifelong friendship with DeWitt Peters, who had helped establish Le Centre d’Art, which is now among the oldest surviving cultural institutions in the Caribbean.
Anderson was a discerning collector. During these trips, he purchased many Haitian artworks, considering each an inspiration to his own creative spirit. Upon his passing in 2007, the Museum received a bequest of 160 works of Haitian art and a generous endowment that primarily supports the expansion and conservation of this important Haitian art collection.
This exhibit is presented with support from The Isabelle Gwynn and Robert Daine Exhibition Endowment.
This program is presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.
