Permanent Collection Sparknotes

The play “Permanent Collection” focuses on an African-American man who has just taken over an art museum named Sterling North. While digging through storage, he finds eight African sculpture pieces and wants to add them to the collection at the Morris Foundation on the campus of a college. The Director of Education Paul Barrow is hanging on to the words of Mr. Morris and his vision because he doesn’t want anything to change at the museum according to Mr. Morris’ will, which contributes to the title of the play “Permanent Collection.” In the play, there is no answer as to who is right and who is wrong. North told a journalist that he believed Barrow to be a racist but Barrow doesn’t feel this way. He just doesn’t want to change the legacy that Mr. Morris left behind and he feels the art has no value to be placed next to paintings by people like Picasso. Throughout the play, they debate on what’s

They both were right because Mr. Morris left the museum in a specific layout and format and Barrow only wanted to follow his ways. North was right because of the location of the museum it would only be fair to add the African sculptures and there should have been an equal amount of art from every source, not just from “white people”.

Even though they both were right, they both were also wrong. The reasoning behind them wanting to add to or keep the sculptures out of the museum was more for their own reasoning instead of the intentions of everyone else. Racism, still to this day, plays a big role in everything that we may do or say and that is what fueled the fire between the two men. The art represented more than just sculpture. The art represented the social issue of racism by not having “black art” in a “white museum”. History shows us that black or African-American people have had a hard time fitting into this society because of the older days were black people were considered to be inferior to the “white