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| Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King and Ralph Bunche at the United Nations, 1964. UN Photo | The year-long centenary celebration of Ralph Bunche's birth on 7 August
1903 has come full circle, in a sense, with the Queens Museum of Art's fascinating new show, Ralph Bunche: Diplomat for Peace and Justice, on view in Flushing Meadows—Corona Park in Queens, New York, from 11 April to 4 July 2004. It has come full circle because Mr. Bunche, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former United Nations Under-Secretary-General, lived in Queens from 1947 until his death in 1971. In fact, he lived near the Queens Museum itself, first in UN housing and later in a private home in Kew Gardens. He worked at the building where the Museum is currently located when it served as home to the UN General Assembly from 1946 to 1950; it is the original New York City Building from the 1939 World's Fair and the site of the ratification of the plan for the partition of Palestine drafted by Mr. Bunche. So the Queens Museum seems a particularly apt spot to reflect on the life and legacy of this extraordinary African-American, who rose from humble beginnings (his father was a barber) to become a major player on the world stage.
The exhibit, the most comprehensive of its kind in the country, is a showcase for more than 200 photographs, documents, films, artifacts and memorabilia culled from three earlier shows and from archives at his alma mater, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The material is organized around the three issues that most engaged Mr. Bunche, both personally and professionally: race relations in the United States, African decolonization and peace in the Middle East. An impressive timeline wraps around the main gallery space and highlights the milestones in his life and
the century he lived in.
Although parts of the show have been on display elsewhere in the City (at UN Headquarters, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The Ralph Bunche Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center), the Queens Museum's exhibit is the first to weave in thematic artworks by Mr. Bunche's contemporaries—Archibald Motley, Augusta Savage, Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett—and contemporary artists—Radcliffe Bailey, Doron Solomons, Brad McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry. Several of the works were commissioned especially for the Museum; Franklin Sirmans curated the art.
But the collection in the galleries is mainly archival material, a treasure trove for students of history of all stripes: political, social, cultural, intellectual and diplomatic. Sir Brian Urquhart, Mr. Bunche's successor as UN Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs and author of the biography Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (1998), serves as historical advisor to the show and guides visitors gracefully through the complexities of the Palestinian partition plan, Middle East peace agreements, the origins of modern peacekeeping forces and the genesis of the decolonization movement. Mr. Bunche played a central role in each case.
And as the timeline makes amply and delightfully clear, he specialized in "firsts". He graduated first in his class at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, but was excluded from the city's honour society because of his race, and first in his class at UCLA. He was the first African-American to earn a doctorate in government and international relations at Harvard University, the first African-American to head a division in the United States State Department, and the first person of colour to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Museum-goers can peer at a wealth of personal and academic memorabilia, from his high-school yearbook to his college sweatshirt (he was a three-letter athlete: baseball, football and basketball) to his Masters-programme grades in political science (he was an "A" student) to his dissertation, "French Administration
in Togoland and Dahomey" (1934), the latter two while at Harvard.
This scholar-diplomat-activist was the quintessential mover and shaker. Moving around the timeline, we learn that he: founded Howard University's Political Science Department when he was only 28 years old; helped establish the National Negro Congress in 1936; published his first book, A World View of Race, that same year; became chief researcher and advisor to Gunnar Myrdal, Director of the ground-breaking study on race, An American Dilemma (1944); was appointed senior social science analyst at the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1941; participated in the drafting of the UN Charter in 1945; and became Director of the UN Trusteeship Division in 1946. Viewers take note: his blue UN nameplate from 1947 has been preserved.
But the artifacts, and the achievements, go on at a dizzying rate. There's a facsimile of the UN General Assembly vote on the majority plan for the partition of Palestine drafted by Mr. Bunche, the leather case for his Nobel Peace Prize, and the United States Medal of Freedom and certificate awarded to him in 1963. Sundry items from his 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr. are also on view, as is the funeral visitation ledger from Riverside Church, New York, dated December 1971 (then UN Secretary-General U Thant eulogized his colleague and was the first to sign the book).
Still photos flash from a projector on three sides of the timeline gallery, and we see Mr. Bunche, the man and the statesman, in the arena hobnobbing with world leaders, diplomats, family and friends. A reading table in the centre of the room offers visitors a sampling of his writings and speeches. He had an extraordinary facility with words, hence his success as a negotiator. For starters, there's his 1950 Nobel Lecture, "Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time" (UN Chronicle, Issue 3, 2003), the 1959 Brown University convocation address, "Man in a Contracting World in an Expanding Universe", and the 1964 memorial lecture for Dag Hammarskjöld.
Three satellite gallery areas contain items that expand on the exhibit's major themes. Don't miss Charles White's mural, Progress of the American Negro (1939-1940), in the Race Relations room. It's an expressionistic, very moving portrait of five African-American icons—Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver and Marian Anderson. As the curators remark, "the history of black America is in continuous formation. Surely a young artist today might add Bunche to the genealogy ...".
A potpourri of personal items is sprinkled throughout the theme rooms and adds the human touch. My favourite memento in the Decolonization gallery is Ralph Bunche's hat and briefcase, ca. 1970. We learn here that he had a passion for Borsalino hats, in addition to peace and justice, bought them in Europe and didn't want to wear any other kind. There's his colourful collection of African postcards acquired in the late 1930s while conducting research on colonialism, not to mention a selection of the 12,000 photographs he took on the two-year field trip.
A nearby display case contains a guide that Mr. Bunche wrote when working for OSS. Titled Union of South Africa, Soldier's Guide: What Americans Should Know about South Africa (ca. 1941-1944), it cleverly and simply serves to demystify the African experience: "You are going from one USA to another—the Union of South Africa. ... The people you will see are types—white, brown and black—that you are pretty well familiar with at home. When you stroll down the streets of Cape Town, Durban or Johannesburg ... you may think of Washington, St. Louis or Atlanta—or maybe Harlem."
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| The Signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Armistice Agreement, Feb 2, 1949. Photo/Courtesy of Queens Museum of Art |
A billiards table is set up in the Middle East room next door and visitors are invited to play. Mr. Bunche excelled at the game, we are told, and an image of the legendary negotiator shooting pool during the Israeli-Egyptian armistice talks in Rhodes in 1949 is projected onto the table itself. The series of armistice agreements that he mediated in 1948-1949 between Israel and its four Arab neighbours secured Mr. Bunche the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1966, a few years before his death, the über-diplomat confided to a journalist the secret of his trade: "I am a professional optimist. If I were not a professional optimist through 21 years in the United Nations service, mainly in conflict areas—Palestine, Congo, here [Cyprus], and in Kashmir—I would be crazy. You have to be optimistic in this work or get out of it. ... That is, optimistic in the sense of assuming that there is no problem ... which cannot be solved and that, therefore, you have to keep at it persistently and you have to have confidence that it can be solved."
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