Following an unexpected but temporary closure in January, Hammonds House Museum has reopened with the launch of a new season of exhibitions titled Pursuit.
Three new exhibits will roll out during 2022, starting with No Justice, No Peace: Protest Photography from 1967-2022, which illustrates Black America’s ongoing pursuit of justice, freedom and equality (now through June 26). It runs concurrently with a virtual reality film series, In Protest: Grassroots Stories from the Front Lines.
My View From Seven Feet, July 15 through September 18, will highlight the vibrant, large-scale works of former basketball player Joe Barry Carroll. His visual recollections and narratives of growing up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, will illustrate “the pursuit of freely living according to one’s own agency,” according to the museum’s press release.
For the third exhibit under its Pursuit umbrella, the museum has commissioned a work by Tracy Murrell, which will be on view October 15 through December 18. Dans l’espoir d’un Avenir Meilleur (In Hope for a Better Future) will explore contemporary Haitian transmigration from the female perspective. As stated in the press release: “Murrell offers a counter-narrative to the (im)migration story and brings to light the universality of migration as a shared experience.”
The curators for these exhibits were not announced.
Featured photographers in No Justice, No Peace include Jim Alexander, Dr. Doris Derby, shelia turner and Julie Yarbrough. Many of the exhibit’s black-and-white images capture moments from the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s, the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and marches by the Ku Klux Klan, while others chronicle today’s Black Lives Matter protests.
The virtual reality film series, available now in the museum’s upstairs gallery, features unsung heroes of the Black Lives Matter movement. Each of the four installments focuses on a different city: Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Atlanta. The three Atlanta episodes feature rapper and activist Killer Mike, Ayanna Gregory (daughter of the legendary activist Dick Gregory) and James Tiago Bertrand, a cinematographer who filmed the Atlanta protests up close.
Hammonds House Museum’s new hours are Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Admission $10 adults, $7 for seniors. Online registration is required. Visitors are required to wear masks.