"Three low pedestals to the right of the case supported portrait busts below eye level.
Harsh lighting caused shadows to pool in their eye cavities, imparting an air of cranky melancholia
to a toga-clad Henry Clay, and Napoleon Bonaparte and Andrew Jackson in uniform. None of
these worthies had ever lived in Maryland; they exemplify those previously deemed deserving of
sculptural representation and subsequent museum acquisition. To the left were three higher and
empty pedestals that bore only small plaques proclaiming the names of celebrated African
Americans who were Marylanders: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Banneker.
By dramatizing the absence of their portraits, Wilson found a canny way to reveal the slights of
history and to indicate major gaps in the museum's collections."

-Sins of Omission: Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum
By Judith E. Stein
First published in Art in America, October 1993

http://yougenics.net/griffis/courses/arts344/readings/MiningMuseum.pdf