🚨FINAL WEEKEND!🚨 The Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America," is extended through the weekend! This is your last to see it before it closes on May 5th. Our Exhibition Gallery in Cold Spring Harbor will be open 10 AM to 4:30 PM now through Sunday. Come see us!
#voicesvotes #agoranewyork @nysmuseums
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To accompany the Smithsonian exhibition "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America," we were thrilled to borrow a scaled model and original sketches by Long Island artist Robert Berks (1922–2011) for the national monument to Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955). On loan from the estate of the artist, these artworks are rarely on public view.
Mary McLeod Bethune was born free to formerly enslaved parents in South Carolina and would become one of the most important Black educators and civil and women’s rights leaders of the twentieth century. During her long career, she founded a college for Black students, registered women to vote across the county, established the National Council for Negro Women, and in her role as director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration, served as the highest-ranking African American woman in the federal government. An influential advisor to President Roosevelt, Bethune also advocated for the desegregation of the defense industry during World War II. Her life was celebrated in 1974 with the unveiling of a national memorial in Washington, DC by sculptor Robert Berks, who worked out of a converted schoolhouse on the North Fork. The memorial was the first statue on public land in the nation’s capital to honor a Black woman and depicts Bethune handing her legacy to future generations.
Over the course of his career, Robert Berks created more than 300 bronze portraits and over a dozen monuments. His subjects ranged from President John F. Kennedy and Albert Einstein to Martin Luther King and Mary McLeod Bethune. Born in Boston, Berks moved to Orient in the 1960s where he worked for over half a century. He often observed his subjects in real life, capturing their emotions, facial expressions, and body language. Described by The New York Times as “the Capital’s Michelangelo,” Berks was the first sculptor to have his work featured on the cover of Time Magazine.
Swipe 👉 to see photographs of Bethune, Berks creating the monument, and its installation in Washington, DC! Images courtesy of @libraryofcongress and the Robert Berks Estate.
#voicesvotes #agoranewyork @sitesexhibitions @nysmuseums
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