Black Mural Vote Project on Display
Learn about history by seeing it interpreted on canvas.
The Black Vote Mural Project opens at the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis February 15 and runs through December 21.
The temporary exhibit explores the intersection of public art, black voices and civil rights. Seventeen murals will grace the interior galleries of the museum, the interpretations regional artists created based on the 2020 Black History Month theme African Americans and the Vote.
“Our goal is to register and inspire people to vote,” says Chanel Compton, director of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture and the Banneker-Douglass Museum. “We want to showcase regional artists, present exceptional scholarship and promote community building and hope this exhibit will inspire others to be agents of change in their own communities.”
“We partnered with regional artists, educators and groups to implement the project,” Compton says. “The theme for the year encompasses the 100th anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the 15th Amendment, so we strategically partnered with committees and groups that are doing programmatic work around those topics.”
The Banneker-Douglass Museum—located in the old Mt. Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church—is Maryland’s official museum of African American heritage and is part of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture.
On permanent exhibit at the museum is Deep Roots, Rising Waters: A Celebration of African Americans in Maryland. The exhibit includes details of Maryland’s first African American settler Mathias de Sousa, stories and music from Carr’s Beach and Sparrow’s Beach [See CBM Bay Weekly story “A Taste of History: Carr’s and Sparrow’s beaches project whets the appetite” in our Feb. 6 issue] and an opportunity to hear a speech by Frederick Douglass against racism and slavery.
An opening reception will be held Saturday, February 15 from 3-6pm, rsvp: https://bit.ly/36rwx8k.