''They Could Still Serve'' is a 2001 painting by

Ellen Gallagher Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and ...

. It is in the collection of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(MoMA) in

New York, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Uni ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. ''They Could Still Serve'' represents Gallagher's biggest focused body of work: large scale pieces that explore racial stereotypes of African Americans, specifically those seen in

minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...

Description

Penmanship Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal histor ...

paper is glued on a canvas with tiny

googly eye Googly eyes, or wiggle eyes, are small plastic crafting items used to imitate eyeballs. Googly eyes traditionally are composed of a white plastic or card backing covered by a clear, hard-plastic shell, encapsulating a black plastic disk. The comb ...

balls drawn throughout the piece, primarily on the lines of the penmanship paper.

History

This painting was acquired in 2001 by using funds from

Emily and Jerry Spiegel Emily Joy Spiegel (; December 21, 1928 – February 16, 2009) and Jerome E. Spiegel (July 4, 1925 – November 3, 2009) were American real estate developers and art collectors based in Long Island, New York. Early life Jerome E. "Jerry" Spiegel ...

and Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro Funds and gift of Agnes Gund. ''They Could Still Serve'' has been exhibited in numerous group shows as MoMA. In 2007, it was included in ''Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making'' because of the cartoonish style of the eyeballs. In 2008, the piece was in ''Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now'' and in 2010-2011's ''On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century''.

Insight about the work

The name, ''They Could Still Serve'', comes from an etching in ''The Disasters of War'' series by Francisco de Goya.

Description

History

Insight about the work

References

Further reading