"Seeking for the Lost:" exhibit memorializes enslaved people

Minnesota artist Christopher Harrison painted eight portraits based on missing persons advertisements from the St. Paul Appeal

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By Rachel Hoppe / The Hubbard School

Museum-goers milled around the Weisman Art Museum on Wednesday, viewing an  exhibit of sepia-hued portraits of enslaved Americans. 

“I thought the pictures were from the 1800s,” said Karon Fort, a visitor examining the portrait of Charley Byrd. “They really looked like old photographs.” 

“Seeking for the Lost”, a new exhibition at the Weisman showcases paintings of missing enslaved people during the Reconstruction era in America.

JoJo Bell, president of the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota, commissioned the exhibit to include portraits of missing slaves whose family members placed advertisements in the St. Paul newspaper The Appeal, according to The Weisman’s website. The column — “Seeking for the Lost” —  allowed families to put advertisements in the paper free of charge and inspired the exhibition’s name. 

The Appeal was provided the Midwest’s African American population with news, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. In addition to missing-persons advertisements, the paper included death and marriage announcements of African Americans in the area. 

Minnesota artist Christopher Harrison painted eight portraits of people described in The Appeal’s advertisements, according to Weisman’s website. 

Harrison said in an interview with the Hubbard Reporting Experience the exhibit also included three prints of the newspaper’s founders and editor: 

• Amanda Lyles, a businesswoman, activist and co-founder of St. James AME Church in St. Paul

• James K. Hilyard, a fellow co-founder of St. James, volunteer Civil War veteran and businessman

• J.Q. Adams, editor of the Appeal during the 1880s, brought on by Hilyard, who expanded its reach, to St. Louis, Washington, Chicago and Dallas

The missing persons portraits use the same color scheme as sepia-tone photographs, mimicking the appearance of photos from the Reconstruction Era of U.S. history. 

Harrison selected the eight people because they resonated with him. He said he wanted to use advertisements that felt more generic in their physical descriptions but had a sentimentality for the people who placed the ads:

• Mrs. John Jackson, a missing mother who was enslaved in St. Martinsville, La., and Waxahachie, Texas, who appeared in the May 23, 1891, issue

• William Fields, a father who was enslaved by Luke Matthews and supposed to be somewhere in Ohio and appeared in the Jan. 24, 1891, issue

• Hannah Slakum, a daughter enslaved in Virginia whose mother was sold and taken to Texas and who appeared in the Feb. 21, 1891, issue

• Jacob Gardiner, a father who was enslaved in Kentucky, freed in 1846 before moving near Madison and appeared in the Feb. 14, 1891, issue

• Charley Byrd, a missing brother from Mississippi enslaved by Jack Graves who appeared in the May 23, 1891, issue

• Louisa Warren, a missing sister enslaved by a man named Dunbar in Mississippi who appeared in the Feb. 28, 1891, issue

• Buchanan and Martha Childs, two children born in Kentucky and sold to a man in either North or South Carolina who appeared in the Jan. 24, 1891, issue

• Washington Samson lived in Mississippi and was enslaved by a man named Judge Perkins, appearing in the Feb. 14, 1891 issue. Samson’s son, who submitted the ad to the column, also searched for his mother who was unnamed in the advertisement. 

The portraits also include newspaper clippings of the advertisements for the specific person.

“I did research online about actual portraits for photography of African Americans during and after Reconstruction,” Harrison said. 

He said he wanted to break away from the stereotypical understanding of slavery in his portraits by trying to capture the diversity of enslaved people.

“I wanted to show the different demographics of the institution,” Harrison said. “I have an older couple in there and portraits of children. And then there are adults too.”

He considered the institutional situations of his subjects as well.

“You can tell by their dress and how they’re presented that they were in different institution stations,” Harrison said. “Not everybody had the same level of bondage and some of it was to their advantage because they got nicer clothes and certain privileges.”

Weisman senior curator Diane Mullin said the exhibit, which opened Aug. 3, has already been well received. 

“We had 2,000 people come to see it over the first weekend it was open,” Mullin said. 

Mullin said she was unaware of the missing people ads before the exhibit came to Weisman, but it gives insight into the history of St. Paul during Reconstruction. 

“A lot of people say this exhibit should be sad, but I don’t think it is entirely,” Mullin said. “I think the exhibition is about hope and resilience as people searched for their family.”

“He made everyone look very dignified,” Mullin added

Yve Spengler, a Weisman security guard who spends much of her workday peering at the exhibit on her rounds, said she was impacted by the gravity of the portraits.

“It’s sad to see but also really moving,” Spengler said. “Art should be moving.” 

Mullin also said she instructed Weisman staff to explain to museum-goers that Harrison did not know what the subjects of the portraits looked like. He used his research on depictions of enslaved Americans along with the Appeal advertisements to guide his painting process.

“It’s something different between this era and today,” she said. “Today, we go off physical description a lot more than they did back then.”

The exhibition resonated with Weisman visitors on Wednesday, including Fort. 

“It’s cool to see it has its own section and gives people an opportunity to get a view of how African Americans were viewed at the time,” Fort said. 

Another visitor, Rachel Bergman, said she was struck by the differences in people’s struggles during the portraits’ time period and today. 

“It is extremely enlightening,” Bergman said. “Our generation doesn’t really learn about this stuff in history class.”

“Seeking for the Lost” is available to view in the Weisman’s Edith Carlson Gallery until Feb. 16, 2025.