Arts Commentary & Writing, No. ❸
April 5, 2021
Let’s Talk: “Off the Record”
On Black presence, archival absence, and institutional reclamation
Reviewed by Susan Ward
Curated by Ashley James—the Guggenheim’s first full-time Black curator—Off the Record brought together thirteen artists whose work challenges the presumed neutrality of official records. The exhibition probed how documents, far from being objective truths, are often shaped by power, exclusion, and cultural bias. Through photography, collage, print, and digital manipulation, the artists invited viewers to question who gets to tell history—and who gets left out.
Tucked into one of the Guggenheim’s compact rotunda galleries, the exhibition unfolded in three sections: Undermining Objectivity, Shaping Culture and History, and Scribbling Against the State. Together, they traced the evolving relationship between documents and power, revealing how records can obscure as much as they illuminate—and how artists can subvert, reframe, or rewrite them.
The show opened with Sarah Charlesworth’s 1977 Herald Tribune series, where photographs from front pages are stripped of text. The gesture of erasure highlights how narratives are constructed, exposing the editorial decisions behind what gets printed—and what doesn’t. In contrast, Glenn Ligon’s stenciled text—Jean Genet’s line, We Are the Ink That Gives the White Page a Meaning—progressively bleeds and blurs into illegibility. Together, these works bookend the spectrum of absence and excess, using the mark as both medium and message.
Leslie Hewitt, Riffs on Real Time (3 of 10), 2006–09. Chromogenic print, 30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61 cm), edition 5/5. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee 2010.55. © Leslie Hewitt
The idea of the mark—whether written, scratched, painted, or printed—threads through the exhibition. Carrie Mae Weems and Tomashi Jackson explore text-image relationships through photography and abstraction, respectively. In My Father’s FBI File, Sadie Barnette transforms surveillance documents into pink-sprayed, rhinestone-studded affirmations of Black life and resistance. Opposite her, Sable Elyse Smith’s crayon-colored Coloring Book pages reimagine bureaucratic and judicial forms through the lens of childhood. These works don’t just revise the record—they reclaim it.
Photography, often assumed to be objective, is another medium under scrutiny. Hank Willis Thomas appropriates archival advertisements to expose the commodification of Black identity under capitalism. Nearby, Lorna Simpson’s Flipsideconjures the quiet violence of surveillance that shadows Black life. Lisa Oppenheim and others further challenge the authority of the image, blurring the line between photograph as record and as subject.
Sadie Barnette. My Father's FBI File; Government Employees Installation, 2017 (detail). Five inkjet prints, edition 3/5, 22 x 17 in (55.9 x 43.2 cm) each. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Despite the weight of its themes—systemic racism, state violence, cultural erasure—the exhibition maintains a dynamic rhythm. James’s curatorial choices create visual and conceptual balance, pairing vivid color against monochrome restraint, dense text with blank space. Installations converse across walls: Adrien Piper’s stark triptych tempers the chromatic exuberance of Barnette and Smith; Carlos Motta’s printed handouts—listing U.S. interventions in Latin America—ground the space with sobering facts.
Importantly, Off the Record didn’t stop at visual presentation. Wall texts, handouts, audio tours, and digital supplements offered deeper context without dictating interpretation. Interviews, curator talks, and virtual walkthroughs extended the experience beyond the museum, democratizing access in form and spirit. These materials also became part of the show’s thesis: that every account, even the exhibition itself, is another document subject to critique, reinterpretation, and revision.
Installation view, Off the Record, on view April 2-September 27, 2021, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Image Courtesy: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2021.
The strength of Off the Record lies not only in its content but in its refusal to flatten Black experience into a singular narrative. By centering Black artists—9 of the 13 were Black—without limiting the show to Blackness alone, James offered a powerful alternative to tokenism. Her curatorial vision reframed archival critique as a tool of liberation, not just an academic exercise.
Yet, the stark whiteness of the Guggenheim—both architecturally and institutionally—lingers in the background. The tension between radical content and elite context raises familiar questions: Can historically exclusive spaces truly be reclaimed? Can a museum so entrenched in systems of privilege ever serve as a site of decolonization?
Still, Off the Record delivered what few shows manage: it unsettled, provoked, and made room for complexity. It asked viewers to listen differently—to see the record not as a fixed truth, but as a living, contested terrain.