Meredith Martin, NYU
Art and Enslavement in Old Regime France: From the Galleys of Marseille to the Plantations of Saint-Domingue

Friday, February 23rd at 5pm
Segal Theater (1st floor), CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave*

Followed by a reception in room 4202

*Visitors from non-CUNY institutions will need to sign in at the lobby desk and show government-issued picture identification to enter the building.

Free and open to the public; first come, first served. Please arrive early to guarantee a seat.

In this talk, Meredith Martin will explore the intertwined histories of art and enslavement in early modern France, focusing on two case studies: the presence and representation of enslaved Muslims on the royal galleys of Louis XIV, and links between land ownership and enslavement in late 18th C. Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and the Paris art world. Related to collaborative, multimedia projects she has been involved in, Martin will discuss their histories and methodological challenges in addition to their varied manifestations in a co-authored book, an exhibition, a digital mapping website, and a film.

Meredith Martin is Professor of Art History at New York University and the Institute of Fine Arts and a founding editor of Journal18. A specialist in early modern French art and empire, she is the co-author (with Gillian Weiss) of The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Gallery Slavery in Louis XIV’s France (Getty, 2022). Martin is also the author of Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de’ Medici to Marie-Antoinette (Harvard, 2011), and a co-author of Meltdown: Picturing the World’s First Bubble Economy (2020), which is related to an exhibition she co-curated for The New York Public Library.

This talk is sponsored by the Global Early Modern Studies Program and the PhD Program in French at the CUNY Graduate Center.

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