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Richmond �������ٳ�é, the great African American sculptor, gets kudos for his realism, but that’s faint praise that damns him: In the 1930s, when his career took off, there were hundreds of artists who had as fine a technique; there are still lots in Times Square, sculpting tourists’ faces in clay.

Looking at the 16 busts and figures in the �������ٳ�é survey at Rosenfeld — it’s curated by the British artist Isaac Julien, who has a stunning video in the Whitney Biennial — I realized that it’s best to ignore technique and to think of them as three-dimensional photographs, or as much as you possibly could before the age of 3-D scanners.

Those were applied to African Americans in �������ٳ�é’s era, forcing them into cultural pigeonholes.

“You can almost graph my crowd scene compositions onto an Archibald Motley Jr., jazz scene. You can see the bones of Richmond �������ٳ�é in my sculptures,” he said.

“The people who came were completely astonished,” said the exhibition’s curator, Christine Barthe, who is in charge of photography at the museum.