When Edgar Degas traveled across the sea to visit his Creole family in New Orleans in 1872, he continually expressed his anxiety about his sight and his difficulty apprehending or painting the black persons so novel to him. The artist claimed that the brevity of his visit justified his decision not to depict this foreign place so pervaded by a boldly visible racial difference. The unfamiliarity of the spectacle of blackness made Degas think about other French artists who might have attempted to meet such a challenge, for instance Manet. This talk analyzes the intersection of sight, blindness, race and Creole identity in the writings and art of Degas during this voyage to and from New Orleans.

Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby specializes in 18th- through early 20th-century French and American art and visual and material culture, particularly in relation to the politics of race and colonialism. Grigsby writes on painting, sculpture, photography and engineering as well as the relationships among reproductive media and new technologies from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.

Grigsby is the author of Extremities. Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (2002); Colossal. Engineering the Suez Canal, Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower and Panama Canal. Transcontinental Ambition in France and the United States in the Long Nineteenth Century (2012); and Enduring Truths. Sojourner's Shadows and Substance (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Her current book-in-progress, Creole Looking. Portraying France’s Foreign Relations in the Nineteenth Century, examines France’s relationship to the Caribbean and Americas. She also curated Sojourner Truth, Photography and the Fight Against Slavery, an exhibition of her collection of civil war photographs given to the Berkeley Art Museum (July 27-October 23, 2016).

Grigsby is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing (2018), two Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellowships (2002 and 2008), a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (2005), a History of Art Undergraduate Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to Art Historical Education, 2003 and The Distinguished Teaching Award, UC Berkeley (2012).

Image: Degas, Portrait of Estelle Musson Balfour Degas, 1872