New York Times Video Journalist and Alumna Alexandra Eaton ’07 Tells the Story of the Met’s Acquisition of a Rare 19th-Century American Painting of an Enslaved Youth

In a video and written piece for the New York Times, journalist Alexandra Eaton ’07 traces the fascinating story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent acquisition of the 19th-century painting Bélizaire and the Frey Children, attributed to Jacques Amans, a French portraitist of Louisiana’s elite in that era. The Met describes the painting as “one of the rarest and most fully documented American portraits to come to light of an enslaved Black subject depicted with the family of his Southern White enslaver.” For generations, the painting was neglected in family attics and the basement of the New Orleans Museum of Art until Jeremy K. Simien, an art collector from Baton Rouge, tracked it down. Simien had seen the painting in a 2013 auction house record with four figures depicted, and later discovered a 2005 record with the figure of the Black youth overpainted. “The fact that he was covered up haunted me,” Simien said in an interview. The painting has now been acquired by the Met for its permanent collection. “I’ve been wanting to add such a work to the Met’s collection for the past 10 years,” said Betsy Kornhauser, the curator for American paintings and sculpture who handled the acquisition, “and this is the extraordinary work that appeared.”

Post Date: 08-15-2023