From the City of Dallas Arts & Culture website:
“City Manager T.C. Broadnax appointed Martine Elyse Philippe as the Director of the Office of Arts & Culture, effective December 5, 2022.
With over 15 years of experience in arts administration, Martine comes to Dallas having served as the National Community Art Manager for A Window Between Worlds based in Los Angeles, CA and as the Chair for District 12 Arts Task Force for the Atlanta City Council. In her role with AWBW she is the national creative strategist for the development of art- based leadership and resources to transform trauma and create community-based methods of change and social justice through art.
Martine’s art administration experience spans across city government and the non-profit sector. As a trained dancer, she began her arts administration career with the City of Atlanta whereby she developed dance curriculum and then went on to become the Cultural Affairs Project Coordinator for the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. She has served in several executive roles, such as the Executive Director of Atlanta’s Resource for Entertainment & Arts.
Martine has a Master of Arts in Education Leadership from Argosy University and a BA in African American Studies from the University of Georgia. Martine is devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion in every facet of art and culture. She has a desire to utilize the breadth of her experiences to make a tremendous impact in the City of Dallas.”
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How does an artist design a space that recognizes the victims of racial violence yet promotes healing? Is it even possible to produce a work of art that promotes peace while visually communicating the consequences of centuries of racial inequality and violence? As city leaders and activists come together across the nation to develop strategies to re-contextualize spaces that were once the home to monuments that glorified the Confederacy, Dallas, Texas can serve as a role model on how to successfully design a space that encourages healing.
Freedman’s Memorial is the ideal healing space. Located at 2525 N Central Expressway, the Memorial commemorates the lives of more than 5,000 freed slaves who were buried in a once-forgotten cemetery. Freedman’s Cemetery was one of the largest Freedman Cemeteries in the Country. It was established as a burial ground for Dallas’ early African American population in 1861. The site represents the remnants of the once-thriving North Dallas community which from the Civil War to the 1970s was the largest segregated African American enclave in Dallas and one of the largest in the United States.
In the mid-1990s the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture Public Art Program conducted a national search for artists to submit qualifications for consideration to design, fabricate and install a space dedicated to recognition of the destruction of the Freedman’s Cemetery. David Newton was selected. Freedman’s Memorial eloquently tells the story of an African man and woman, standing proud, strong, and healthy located in the two niches, on either side of the entryway arch. The free-standing figure on the left of the entrance, the “Sentinel” or “Warrior,” is dressed in clothes inspired by the Benin culture of West Africa. He holds a large ceremonial machete with its blade pointed to the ground. His female counterpart, the “Prophetess,” holds a small harp to her chest with her left hand. On the other side of the arch within the memorial garden, two bronze figures occupy the niches. Unlike the bronze free-standing works at the front of the archway, these works are bronze bas-reliefs. The figures emerge from a background that suggests the waves of an ocean. The female figure, the “Violated Soul,” whose wrists and feet are bound by shackles, covers her face with her hands. Her male counterpart, the “Struggling Soul,” is similarly shown with his wrists and feet bound by iron shackles; he covers his own scream with his bent left arm. Above each of the life-size bronze figures, in the top register of the arch, are twelve smaller bronze sculptures, suggestive of West African wood sculpture.
Through the archway at the center of the memorial park, “Dream of Freedom,” sits atop a Texas Red granite circular plinth. The sculpture shows a newly emancipated couple. The male figure, whose shirtless torso is scarred by whip marks on his back, wraps his left arm around a kneeling woman. Directly behind “Dream of Freedom,” is a polished granite slab with Nia Akimbo’s poem, “Here.” Two remaining headstones from the original cemetery are embedded in the back of this granite slab.
At the base of each statue, bronze plaques list the artist, title of the sculpture, and description of the work. Embedded in the interior arched wall are bronze plaques with poetry by ten children from local schools, who won a local poetry contest. In the lawn, several Texas Red granite blocks have bronze plaques attached to them, identifying the original river bed and unmarked graves.
Freedman’s Cemetery is located at 2525 N Central Expy, Dallas, TX 75204. For more information about David Newton, visit his website at http://www.davidsnewtonsculptor.com/
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The Beauty of South Dallas was a pilot project created by multimedia artist Nitashia Johnson during the inaugural Juanita J. Craft Artist Residency. The project documents the neighborhood of South Dallas and several of its residence, business owners, and community leaders. South Dallas is a community rich with culture and history, but it is quickly changing. The goal of this project was to preserve a period in time that tells us where the neighborhood is before it changes. Over a three month period, September to December 2020, Nitashia has endeavored to connect with the people of the community and use her talents as a multimedia artist/designer to capture the landscape and present it in this website The Beauty of South Dallas.
Art&Seek shares a recent article about multimedia artist, Nitashia Johnson, and how she’s honoring the South Dallas Community through her camera lens.
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Juanita J. Craft, one of Dallas´ most significant civil rights figures and the second African American woman to serve on the Dallas City Council, lived in her home for 50 years. Discussions of the future of the civil rights movement were held here with many other great leaders like Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Since 1994, Craft’s home has been operating as a historical museum, but Dallas’ Office of Arts and Culture department intends on restoring the house by the summer of 2022 with money raised from private fundraising and a $500,000 grant from the National Park Service.
“If we don’t tell these stories and preserve these places now, they will be lost. And it only gets harder as you get further away from the history,” says Director of Arts and Culture, Jennifer Scripps.
Read the full article by the Dallas Morning News.
Help preserve the Juanita J. Craft Civil Rights House for North Texas Giving Day
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