Beatriz Cortez’s exhibit The Portals was not created for the sake of making “great art,” though that was arguably achieved. Rather, she sought to display a colonial history of both the College and Euro-America through her pieces.
The walking tour of her exhibit at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) was co-led by Deputy Director for Curatorial Engagement Lisa Dorin. The tour, which took place this past Thursday, revealed how Cortez’s art reflects a history of erasure of marginalized peoples and their labor. Despite the pieces in the exhibit being defined by struggle, displacement, and racism, a heartening and rebellious tone still prevails.
The pieces in the collection are not only confined to the walls of the WCMA — they have also been placed throughout campus. Curators at WCMA were originally apprehensive about having art displayed outside of the museum since there would be no ability to ensure its preservation. “It goes against the way we think about how to protect the art,” Dorin said during the walking tour of The Portals. Yet, Cortez was adamant that the works be placed outside.
The sculptures currently on display by Hopkins Hall, Griffin Hall, and Hopkins Observatory integrate themselves into the College’s landscape and form the core of Cortez’s exploration of the College’s genealogies. The use of the word “integration” is somewhat ironic considering that the industrial fireplace, metal rocks, and large land acknowledgment sit in stark contrast to the historic buildings they are nestled between. Regardless, the sculptures integrate into the landscape in such a way that they are in conversation with the College’s past.
Mohican Homelands, located outside of Hopkins Observatory, is made of locally sourced river rocks and reads “Kpomthe’nã Mã’eekanik” (“We are walking on the Mohican homeland”). The piece is a tribute to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, which was forced out of the Berkshires and made invisible for much of the Town’s history. Cortez emulated the Indigenous style of rock piling for the piece. “I piled [the rocks] in the way that I know Indigenous builders built to the best of my abilities to honor them,” she said on the tour.
Cortez also mentioned a land acknowledgement banner that she saw on her visit to the College while working on Mohican Homelands. Jayden Jogwe ’24.5 was one of the three students responsible for making the sign.
“One of our goals was to get signage that pretty much acknowledged that these are Mohican homelands and the histories of Stockbridge Munsee peoples in this area being displaced by Williams College,” he said. Cortez referenced the banner often during the tour because of its significance in acknowledging the College’s colonial past.
Another piece that drew reference to the College’s land was xx, located outside Griffin Hall. Constructed out of handmade metal rocks, the sculpture references the unmarked graves of Black people, most of whom were enslaved. “We don’t know where most of the Black graves are,” Cortez said. “There is a cemetery on campus that is for people with tenure, and the Black graves are nowhere to be seen, and that to me was very painful.”
Cortez considers xx to be some consolation for the erasure of Black people from the College’s history. “Ephraim Williams had four slaves, and there’s invisibility about that, too,” she said. “I just wanted to have the most precious gifts that I could bring to these ‘xx’ graves.”
Historic House, placed outside near Hopkins Hall, is a fireplace of hollow bricks that Cortez and her team made themselves. “My entire work is marked by labor, that is, oftentimes handmade,” Cortez said.
Historic House brings up themes of invisibility, as well. “Coming here and walking around with Lisa, looking at the environment, I felt the invisibility of the labor that made those historic houses [at the College] possible,” she said. Representations of labor that, according to Cortez, transform the fireplace from a place of luxury to labor manifest in the smaller details of the piece beyond the bricks, such as the woven basket and plate.
Inside WCMA is an auditory piece and reclaimed artifacts. The auditory piece, a Speculative Speech by Lucy Terry Prince, is an imagining of a speech made invisible. Prince was a free woman, poet, and storyteller who is said to have given a speech to the College’s founding trustees to contest her son’s rejection from the College because of his race. The first Black student would not be admitted to the College until 64 years after Prince’s death in 1885.
Though there is debate on whether Prince actually gave this speech, Cortez deemed such debate irrelevant and said to focus on the message of the speech — that is, Black people deserve a space here, too.
“Right now, there’s nine-plus percent of students who are African American at Williams College, and that’s not okay,” she said.
The last pieces of the exhibit are two Mayan artifacts that were gifted to the College by two alums on an academic expedition.
Cortez sought to reclaim these artifacts, acknowledging the problematic origins of their acquisition by the College and highlighting their cultural importance.
“I believe that these objects chose to reveal themselves to me and give me the responsibility to deal with them,” Cortez said. She placed the artifacts on pedestals to make them objects of both history and art and to give back the significance that was stripped from them when the College’s students extracted them. “I wanted to honor all the things that the Mayan knew … to give this pedestal to this object as a way to say, ‘I see you. I know where you come from,’” she said.
Exhibitions by nature are temporal and often fleeting, but their impact can remain with its viewers. Cortez’s art communicates an important message: a history many at the College as well as Town residents are acutely unaware of.
Her exhibition will not last forever — The Portals will remain on display through May 2024. Nevertheless, Cortez remains confident that, even when gone from the College, her art will remain present in the form of memory. “Even a void leaves a message,” she said.
