New Publication by Noémie Étienne and Meredith Martin

We are pleased to share a new article by Noémie Étienne (University of Vienna) and Meredith Martin (New York University), published in Status Quaestionis (Vol. 28, 2025), titled “Spectacular Blindness: Enslaved Children and African Artifacts in Eighteenth-Century Paris.”

What does it take to see a tragedy? Who holds the privilege of blindness?

The essay examines how African children and objects were presented at the eighteenth-century French court—often visibly present, yet rarely fully acknowledged. Étienne and Martin introduce the concept of “spectacular blindness” to describe this paradox of display and erasure.

Meredith Martin, Professor at NYU and co-director of the Colonial Networks project, brings her extensive work on colonial art and architecture to this collaborative research.

The article is available in the latest issue of Status Quaestionis or here.