Black History Month: Music and Diversity II - ?Portraits of African Americans, Past and Present? and Lecture

The Great Falls Discovery Center will host an artists' reception for the exhibition “Portraits of African Americans, Past and Present” and a lecture by Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Director Tim Neumann. The art exhibition features near life size paintings by Louise Minks and fabric sculpture by Belinda Lyons Zucker.

Louise Minks has lived and painted in Leverett for twenty-five years. Her colorful expressionistic oils and acrylics often focus on local scenes in the Connecticut River Valley or along the Massachusetts seacoast. Louise will exhibit 10 portraits painted between 1993-'94 of African Americans who have either lived, worked or spoke in the Pioneer Valley including Lucy Terry Prince, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luthur King Jr, Jennifer Hines, Janis Wertz Hadley, Horace Clarence Boyer, John Loller Jr, Mary Pittman Wyatt.

Multi-media artist Belinda Lyons Zucker creates detailed handmade dolls with expressive clay faces that represent historic African American figures, family members, and memories of people she has known through her life, frequently women. “Portraits of African Americans, Past and Present” will be on display in the Great Hall of the Discovery Center from February 5 to March 31.

Tim Neumann, Executive Director of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, will give a lecture “A Web of Community: Slavery in a Rural New England Town” at 2:30pm. Learn about the complicated social interactions and economic relationships between free and enslaved African Americans during the mid-eighteenth century when 38% of households in Deerfield included slaves.

Founded in Deerfield in 1870 as the first historical society in Western Massachusetts, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association is a vibrant regional organization, supporting the Memorial Hall Museum and Library, Deerfield Teachers’ Center, Indian House Children’s Museum, and Community Outreach projects. More information at www.deerfield-ma.org and www.AmericanCenturies.mass.edu