***I didn’t update DFK well at all last week – had so much going on (Shugie is two now!! pics soon!) but I promise to get back to daily posts this week, including the post about the castle we just visited in Tennessee that was in the visionary art documentary. And more…***
Over the weekend, news came out that Talladega College has partnered with the High Museum in Atlanta to restore the three Amistad Murals, which two years ago were appraised and insured for $20 million:
There are actually six panels total, and they were painted by Hale Aspacio Woodruff and have been hanging at Talladega College since 1939. The story reads in part:
Restoration will begin in January at the Atlanta Art Conservation Center, and will continue for eight to 12 months. The murals will then be on display at the High Museum from June 2 , 2012, to Sept. 2, 2012.
After the Atlanta exhibition, organizers plan to mount an exhibition of the murals that will tour the country. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., has already contracted to display the murals from Oct. 12, 2012, to Feb. 13, 2013.
After the tour, the murals will not return to Savery Library.
“My vision is that we build a between $10 (million) to $15 million art museum on campus that would house the murals as well as our art department,” Hawkins said.
These are some other pics we’ve taken at Talladega College:
It was founded in 1867 by former slaves, Thomas Tarrant and William Savery and others, to educate the children of former slaves in the community. It started as a one-room building. When capacity quickly became a problem, they wound up purchasing a ‘white’ school that had gone into default, and the interesting part of all that was…Tarrant and Savery had been among the slaves that had built that school 15 years earlier.
The Amistad murals are in the Savery Library.
The school is Alabama’s oldest private historically black liberal arts college.
