“I feel like my past is getting away from me,” said Opal Lee, who founded the institution 20 years ago. She said the collection was unharmed.
Juneteenth
Posted inNews
A 50,000-Square-Foot Juneteenth Museum Is Coming to Texas
Opal Lee, who helped make Juneteenth a federal holiday, is a founding board member, and her granddaughter Dione Sims will be the museum’s director.
Posted inNews
Meaningful Events to Honor Juneteenth in New York City
From Harlem to Brooklyn, from joyful dance to quiet reflection, here are eight ways to observe Juneteenth and recognize the enduring repercussions of slavery.
Posted inNews
Indiana Museum Apologizes for Offering a “Juneteenth Watermelon Salad”
The watermelon is associated with a painful history of racist tropes against Black Americans.
Posted inArt
The Fault Lines of Freedom, From Juneteenth to Independence Day
Solidarity gestures are trending but as we move from one “Independence Day” to another, will they be accompanied by structural change?
Posted inPoetry
Two Poems on Liberation by Rosamond S. King
Rosamond S. King, a Brooklyn-based poet, is a TriniGambianAmerican, has been publishing poetry since 1994, and won a Lamda Literary Award in 2018.
Posted inArt
What We Can Learn From a Vanished Mural of Racist Violence
John Wilson’s 1952 mural “The Incident,” is a salient meditation on the horrors of lynching and though physically lost, the mural endures in archival images, preliminary sketches, and studies.
Posted inArt
How Black Artists in Texas Demonstrate the Spirit of Juneteenth
For better or worse, words like “proud,” “unapologetic,” and “resilient” have come to define Texans, and these words and this attitude also define a spectrum of Black artists who are from, or have lived in, Texas.
Posted inArt
Remembering Juneteenth
I learned to love Juneteenth long before I became aware of the emancipation of enslaved Black people. I think my father was his happiest on that day; he permitted himself to do whatever he wanted on Freedom Day.
Posted inArt
About the Black Skin We Live In
As Juneteenth approaches, I’ve been given reason to consider a confluence of events and ideas: my family’s life-long process of becoming Black and having to police my sons’ consumption of a certain kind of blackface.
Posted inArt
A View From the Easel During Times of Quarantine
This week, for a special Juneteenth edition, we’ve invited Black artists in Texas to reflect on quarantining from their studios.
Posted inArt
Commemorating Juneteenth? Here Are a Few Black-Organized Events to Support
As the Black liberation holiday is being embraced by the mainstream, it feels important to note that actions (and dollars) speak louder than words. Here are a few Black-led organizations to support on June 19 and beyond.