Napoleon Jones-Henderson
The BNTNH Citizen of the Year Award is given to an outstanding member of the community whose volunteer work has made a significant difference in the lives of the people being served. Through an ethic of direct service, the person receiving this award is also an inspiration to others to become involved. As with any contribution to the cultural tradition of community service, the influence of this individual’s work extends far beyond state boundaries and is immeasurable.
The Winner of the BHTNH Citizen of the Year Award is selected by BHTNH committee members and is present at the annual Black New England Conference. We are proud to present our 2023 Citizen of the Year, Napoleon Jones-Henderson
BHTNH chose Napoleon Jones-Henderson as this year’s Citizen of the Year award recipient because of his decades-long commitment to promoting the arts in the Black community.
He was a member of the Board of Incorporation for the Roxbury Cultural District and its first president (2018-2021). Since 1999, he has participated in organizing the annual Roxbury Open Studios. He has conducted workshops and mentored students of all ages, led tours and discussions for public school students, the Girls’ and Boys’ Clubs of Roxbury, Girl Scouts of America, and many other organizations and churches. For 20 years, he has convened Juneteenth celebrations at his home studio. He has also visited many correctional institutions to present his work and conduct workshops for inmates and staff.
As an artist, mentor, and collaborator, Napoleon Jones-Henderson has devoted his life to illuminating and celebrating African Americans and commemorating the African Diaspora. A colleague in AfriCOBRA, Nelson Stevens, called him “the historian of the Black Arts Movement.” His work has been characterized as “spiritual nourishment” and “aesthetic uplift”
Napoleon Jones-Henderson was born in 1943 in Chicago, Illinois. In 1963, Jones-Henderson was accepted into an independent study program in French Art History and Figure Drawing at the Sorbonne Student Continuum-Student and Artist Center in Paris. He then earned his B.F.A. degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1971 and his M.F.A. degree in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005.
In 1969, at the height of the Chicago Black Arts Movement, Jones-Henderson became a founding member of the Chicago collective AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). During his time at the collective, Jones-Henderson created large pictorial woven tapestries that were showcased at the group’s series of exhibitions. The 2011 documentary AfriCOBRA: Art for the People, produced by the TV Land Network, chronicled AfriCOBRA’s history and its many contributions to the 1960s Black Arts Movement.
Jones-Henderson serves as Executive Director of the Research Institute of African and African Diaspora Arts, Inc. and BENNU ARTS, LLC and has received many awards for his artwork and curatorial efforts championing Black Art internationally, among them the 2015 Boston Foundation’s “Brother Thomas Fellowship” and the Merit of Honor Award from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. His work has been shown widely at prestigious institutes and museums, such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Museum of NCAAA and Studio Museum in Harlem; the Library of Congress; the 2018 58th Venice Biennale; and the ICA in Boston. His work has also been commissioned for multiple private collections and numerous public art installations. Most recently, Jones-Henderson was a 2022 ARTADIA Boston Awardee.
Jones-Henderson is honored to be the 2023 Citizen of the Year award recipient. "Thank you, BHTNH, for such an awesome recognition and honor. I am very appreciative of your thinking of me in such a manner. I have lived my life as a co-collaborator with others. It is always in an effort to uplift and inspire others. And be so, inspired and uplifted by others as well.”
“BHTNH has been a stalwart collaborator all these many years in bringing illumination to the heroic voices and lives of African peoples in New England and beyond. And [they] have allowed me the opportunity to join you in this journey toward the greater good of humanity.”
Previous Award recipients include President and CEO, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Jay Williams (2022, CT); Community Activist, Brenda Lett (2021, NH); Sculptor & Activist, Fern Cunningham (2020, MA); Chief editor and publisher of the Bay State Banner, Melvin B. Miller (2019, MA), Activist & Artist, Ashley F. Bryan (2018, ME), Human Services Administrator, Thomas Hooker (2017, NH), Activist & Comedian, Dick Gregory (2016, MA) and MBA Player, Dwight Davis (2015, NH).
