Narratives of Haitian art have long been shaped by the language of tourism, commercial galleries, and the art market. As museums have incorporated Haitian works into their public collections, curators and scholars have begun to reframe these objects, offering new ways to understand their significance. Yet Haitian artworks are still too often examined in isolation. In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot explores how silences shape historical narratives. His insights inform HADC’s approach to the visual and archival record, guiding our efforts to connect artworks with the archival materials that surround them—whether in archives, vertical files, or our image database.
For instance, Ute Stebich’s personal archive contains a rich array of materials, including correspondence, exhibition records, slides, photo negatives, and handwritten notes. As a major advocate for Haitian art and the curator of the Brooklyn Museum’s landmark 1978 exhibition Haitian Art, Stebich helped shape how Haitian art was presented to the public. Her files not only document these narratives but also reveal the depth of her expertise and her relationships with artists, collectors, and other stakeholders in Haiti, the United States, and beyond. We are currently digitizing this archive and conducting art-historical research on her vertical files. Through “Developing Connections,” we offer interpretations of these curatorial materials, linking them to works in our database and expanding the broader story of Haitian art.