Past, Great Plains Present Black History and Museum Future
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Past, Present and Future Great Plains Black History Musuem Co-Curated by Terri Sander + Alex Priest Omaha Public Library / Michael Phipps Gallery Jan 03 - Jan 31, 2014
Perspective and Pertinence Alex Priest
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The Great Plains Black History Museum provides a link to the past, present and future through its unique local to international collection of charged objects. The patina of personal and communal memories place the dialogue of African Americans living and working in the Great Plains into a larger understanding of the role race plays in history and contemporary circumstances. Extracting a fragment of artifacts and photographs from the permanent collection of the Great Plains Black History Museum, Past, Present and Future begins to analyze a larger conversation regarding African American history and the pertinence of the Great Plains; adding a local history to a national perspective. As an advocate for this dual African American history, Bertha Calloway opened the Great Plains Black History Museum in 1976 to archive African American history in the Midwest. According to Calloway, “People must see black history in order for the images they have of black people to change. That is what our museum is about… revealing a history that’s been withheld.” For this exhibition, the African American experience in the Great
_ Plains is broken into five over-arching narratives: Homesteaders, The Culture, Businessmen, Baseball, and the upcoming publication. Each narrative includes five photographs and one object culled from the museum’s extensive collection. Within each context, the objects force conversations that consider the relevance of history, particularly a repressed history, through an awakened momentum and increased awareness of black culture. The dynamics between local and international, along with past and present, conjure a paradigm of ingenuity and repression. As the Great Plains Black History Museum moves and contemplates each object in the collection, African American culture is commemorated for its historical achievements and relevance. Past, Present, and Future facilitates a link to the larger context of American history through the heritage of African American culture. As the present becomes the past, these sentiments of history become important portals in the investigation of how race has shaped personal and communal histories.
Past, Present and Future Terri Sanders
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The Great Plains Black History Museum began in 1976 with Bertha Calloway and her husband collecting pieces of African American lives on the Great Plains, weaving those pieces into collections and placing the collections strategically to form a museum located at 2213 Lake Street, Omaha. Born in Omaha, I have a personal connection to the contents of the Great Plains Black History Museum. The photographs and artifacts that have been chosen for this exhibition are intended to connect you with the lives of the people who are represented in the collections of the museum. Faces and places that you may not have known had a historical place connecting to now, the present. Look at the faces. Do you recognize anyone? Look at the places. Do you see the now building and it’s former glory? The mirror is a reflection of the future, you. The building at 2213 Lake Street is closed, the Museum is open. In this exhibit we invite you to see the past, recognize the present and become a visionary as we look to the future of the Great Plains Black History Museum.
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