2022 Juneteenth Celebration

June 10, 2022  - June 20, 2022

Public art shapes how we see our world. Whether a performance that lives in memory, a sculpture that dominates a public concourse, or a mural that imagines the future, public art provides us with a sense of our own humanity and shared experience. Public art can tell a story, bring history into the present, and correct past injustices. The best public art is bold, imaginative, and uncompromising.

For our 2022 Juneteenth Celebration, the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire celebrates this collective endeavor and the Black artists creating the most compelling art of our time. These programs offer a provocative intersection of history, media, performance, and ideas that deepen our understanding of our nation’s history and centers the Black experience.

SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2022

Bus Tour to Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park | Cornish, NH

Cost: $40 with bus pick up, $30 without bus pick up

By all accounts, the idea for a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment he commanded emerged soon after Shaw, two other officers, and 74 Black soldiers died during the initial attack on a fort that protected Charleston’s harbor.  After local opposition prevented a monument in Beaufort, South Carolina, it fell to Boston’s Joshua Bowen Smith (1813-79), an African American caterer to bring the monument to fruition. 

This tour takes us to the home, studio, and gardens of the memorial’s sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, NH. Participants will see the original model and hear the story of the creation of the first public monument to depict African Americans with dignity.   The program features new scholarship on how the monument was covered in the Black press of the time. Participants will also hear about the lives of the Black men who influenced this important work. This program brings together African American history, art, and poetry in a reflective prelude to Juneteenth

Presenters: 

Doctoral Candidate Dana Green, Public History and Art Fellow, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park and Newton Rose, lead interpretive ranger at Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

Tour Bus will pick up participants at:

Portsmouth Park & Ride | NH Route 33, directly off I-95 Exit 3A, 185 Grafton Drive | 8:30am

Concord Park & Ride | 139 Iron Works Road Concord, immediately accessible from Interstate 89, exit 2 | 9:30am

This event is brought to you in partnership with Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park and the National Park Service

FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2022

Artist Panel Discussion | 6:30PM | Institute of Art and Design at New England Collage | Manchester, NH

Event is Free & Open to the Public

BEARING WITNESS: BLACK ART IN PUBLIC SPACES

From the Black Power and Black Arts movements of the 20th century to the Black Lives Matter movement of today, artists of color have created public art that provided a communal vision of history, heritage, and hope.   Recently the works of three culturally conscious Black artists – the bronze head of a Black woman by Simone Leigh, four Afrofuturistic females by Wangechi Mutu, and the 20-foot sculpture of a dreadlocked black male rider on a stallion by Kehinde Wiley – have set a new standard for what is memorialized in public art:  Imaginative Black Identities.

For this program, panelists will explore the public art scene in New Hampshire. Presenters will share their thoughts on questions such as:     What is Black art?  What does it mean to be a Black artist today? Should the work of artists of color always speak to and reflect the Black experience?  What happens when Black art bears witness to a non-white presence and enters “white” spaces?

Presenters: 
Sam Collins III, Founder of BLKSHE and ART NABE, Concord, NH,  Sam Collins III is a Juneteenth historian and co-founder of the Juneteenth Legacy Project, Galveston, TX  
Richard Haynes, Artist, Educator & Visual Storyteller, Portsmouth, NH 
Cecilia Ulibarri, President & Co-Founders Positive Street Art, Nashua, NH 
Manuel “Phelany” Ramirez, Artist-In-Residence & Co-Founder Positive Street Art, Nashua, NH

Moderator:
Shelley Walcott

The event is brought to you in partnership with  The Institute of Art and Design at New England College.

SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2022 | 4:00PM

Music Hall, Portsmouth, NH | $35

LET IT SHINE: THE HOWARD GOSPEL CHOIR SINGS THE GOSPEL

Performance art has played an important role in narrating the African American story. The Negro spirituals sung by enslaved Africans laid the foundation for today’s gospel, blues, jazz, and rap music. All these musical forms provide artists a chance to express the Black experience.

Join us for this spirit-lifting gospel concert by students, alumni, and community members from Howard University, who perform Christ-centered music as a means of healing and empowering communities. As the first college choir of its kind in the world, the Howard Gospel Choir blazed a trail now filled with gospel music ministries on collegiate campuses across the globe.

Choir Director: Reginald Golden

Asst. Choir Director: Darrell Brown

The event is brought to you in partnership with the Music Hall, Portsmouth

SUNDAY, JUNE 19, 2022 | 2:00PM

Live & Streamed | African Burying Ground Memorial | Free

UPROAR: A CELEBRATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CREATIVITY

Derived from African culture and dance, the art of stepping was created by the enslaved when enslavers refused to let them communicate with drums. Stepping uses the body as an instrument that incorporates slapping the arms, legs, and chest. Made popular by historically Black Greek organizations, today, this art form combines chanting, singing, and dancing.  

Uproar is a high-energy performance that introduces audiences to the unique lineages of this African American dance and demonstrates how enslaved people on American soil used stepping as a vehicle for communication, self-expression, and joy. This performance features an intergenerational step team, poets, and musicians.

Producer: Najee Brown, Founder Theater for the People, Eliot, ME

Watch the Video:

This event is brought to you in partnership with Theater for The People.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2022 | 8:00AM

parking lot People's United Bank | 325 State Street, Portsmouth

THE ART OF ERASURE: GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN

Sand mandalas are colorful, intricate works of art that are destroyed upon completion. As a meditation on impermanence after days or weeks of creating their complex patterns, mandalas are ritualistically destroyed and brushed into an urn and spilled into a body of running water as a symbolic blessing and offering to the universe. Every intricate detail of these mandalas is fixed in the tradition and has many levels of specific symbolic meanings.

Drawing inspiration from this Buddhist tradition of building and destroying art, award-winning public artist Napoleon Jones-Henderson will lead a community workshop and street art project that offers commentary on the erasure of African Americans from our state’s history.  Under Jones-Henderson’s guidance, participants will create a piece that the community will paint on a Portsmouth street. We will film the gradual fading away of the art as it happens.

The eradication of the African Burying Ground in the 19th century serves as a literal example of the erasure of Black people from New Hampshire’s history. This history of erasure serves as a metaphor and inspiration for the creation of a short-lived public art project as a social critique.  The communal construction of this work also evokes the social construction of race, and like the mandala that was built to be destroyed, we can choose to destroy the system that our society built.

WORKSHOP DETAILS

Dates: Thursday, June 16 & Friday, June 17

Time:    4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Location: PMAC | 973 Islington St. | Portsmouth, NH 03801

DAY 1

Guest artist, Napoleon Jones Henderson, will begin the workshop with an overview of the history of public art and the role Black artists have played in its development. In addition, he will use examples of his work to explain major symbolic tropes present in his work and that of other Black artists.

Participants in the workshop will then use this information as a starting point to begin creating their own sketches. Some will be incorporated into the larger design of the project, “The Art of Erasure: Gone But Never Forgotten"

DAY 2

Under Napoleon’s guidance, participants will complete their sketches. Napoleon will collect the submissions, review them, and select the ones to incorporate into the final full-scale design. Three days later, the public will assist in painting that design in the parking lot of People's United Bank at 325 State Street in Portsmouth. 

Registration is required for this workshop. Materials are provided. This is a four-hour commitment spread over two days. 

[Registration Link No Longer Available]

STREET ART PAINTING

Participants are invited to join the general public in painting the final street design on Monday, June 20th beginning at 8:00 AM in the parking lot at People's United Bank, 325 State Street, Portsmouth.

The event is brought to you in partnership with 3S ArtSpace and Portsmouth Music and Arts Center.