NEWS CENTER
Meet Our Members: The Amistad Center for Arts & Culture
Connecticut Arts Alliance continues a series of posts spotlighting its CAA members. The Membership Program, begun in 2019, joins together arts organizations, artists, and arts patrons throughout Connecticut to collectively raise our voice and increase recognition of the important role the arts play in building and inspiring an equitable, vibrant, and connected Connecticut.
The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, an independently incorporated and managed not-for-profit organization located in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, owns and exhibits a vital collection of nearly 7,000 works of art, artifacts, and popular culture objects that document the experience, expressions, and history of people of African descent in America.
Its latest exhibit, Freedom & Fragility, by guest curator Amy Sailor, is now on view through June 21.
Freedom, 1863-2020….Are we there yet?
The promise of “Freedom†for all, though a cornerstone of American values, remains largely fraught to this day. While the Union’s victory over the Confederacy would secure the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, African Americans continued to face recurring challenges aimed at preserving the former racial hierarchy.
Resiliency would characterize the struggle of the African diaspora who survived the middle passage and earned their freedom in the United States of America. In the works of artists Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, and Sheila Pree Bright is an enduring spirit that portrays the challenges and risks African Americans face in exercising their rights. Despite new liberties given to the formerly enslaved and their descendants, the notion of freedom in America is fragile, as continued struggles towards equity define the Black experience.
See the exhibition, join the conversations! Learn more at www.amistadcenter.org.
PHOTO: Eartha Kitt by Philipe Halsman – 1954 – Gelatin Silver Print
If you agree that the advocacy efforts of Connecticut Arts Alliance on behalf of arts and culture in our state are important, please consider becoming a Member today!
