March 10, 2023 Harriet Tubman Day Commemoration Event
February 08, 2023
Celebrate Harriet Tubman Day on March 10, 2023.
Friday, March 10
The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Harriet Tubman Day Commemoration, 2023
Location: The David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park
Time: 4:00-6:30
Online and in-person registration required: https://go.umd.edu/Tubman23RSVP
The faculty, staff, and students of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies invite you to join us for our annual commemoration of Harriet Tubman Day.
This year’s theme - “Wanted: Harriet Tubman” - considers the interplay between fugitivity and desire. From “wanted” as a fugitive from the law to “wanted” as a legacy and symbol, this year’s theme considers the politics of invoking Tubman’s identity. Our moderator for the evening is art historian and curator, Adrienne L. Childs, who will be in conversation with muralist and labor activist, Mike Alewitz and architect/artist, Nina Cooke John about their work, process, and politics of representing Harriet Tubman within the public domain.
In 2000, Mike Alewitz was commissioned to paint a series of murals throughout Baltimore, MD commemorating Harriet Tubman. The first mural in the series “Dreams of Harriet” (25 x125 ft) depicted an armed Tubman and was subsequently decommissioned following Alewtiz’s refusal to disarm her. (See Milton C. Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, & History). Nina Cooke John is the creative force behind one of the country’s most recent and innovative monuments to Harriet Tubman. Conceived in dialog with members of the Newark community, Cooke John’s Tubman, which replaces a statue of Columbus, will be unveiled on March 9 in Newark, New Jersey. Cooke John joins us to discuss the work, her process, and the momentary refusal by the state panel to proceed with the piece.
The public domain is a contested space, and representation is neither neutral nor inconsequential; the evening offers an opportunity to think about race and the politics of representation in the context of monuments and murals within the public domain. Please join us for the conversation.
Event Program
Welcome - Neda Atanasoski, Chair,
Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Opening Remarks - Stephanie Shonekan, Dean,
College of Arts and Humanities
Remarks - Ernestine “Tina” Wyatt
Great-great-great-grandniece of Harriet Ross Tubman
Presentation of the Harriet Tubman Design Award - Neda Atanasoski and Michelle V. Rowley
Ji Young Park (Class of 2024) Artist, Recipient
Introduction of Speakers
Michelle V. Rowley, Associate Professor,
Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Harriet Tubman Day Organizer
“Wanted: Harriet Tubman”
A Conversation with
Mike Alewitz Labor Activist, Muralist
Nina Cooke John Founding Principal, Studio Cooke John, Architect + Design
Adrienne L. Childs (Moderator) Adjunct Curator, The Phillips Collection; and
Associate, W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University
Meet Our Guest Speakers
Nina Cooke John is the Founding Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture + Design, a multidisciplinary design studio that values placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the built environment. She holds an Adjunct Assistant Professorship at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She has also taught architecture and design strategy at Syracuse University and at Parsons, the New School for Design and Columbia University. Cooke John is a 2022 USA Reiss Fellow.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Dwell, NBC’s Open House, the Center for Architecture’s 2018 exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture and PBS NewsHour Weekend.
Cooke John’s monument of Harriet Tubman, “Shadow of a Face,” will be unveiled on March 09, 2023, in Newark, New Jersey.
Mike Alewitz is a labor activist, muralist, educator, and agitprop artist. He is Professor Emeritus Mural Painting & Street Art at Central Connecticut State University, where he taught Mural Painting and Street Art. He has also held the position of artistic director of the Labor Art and Mural Project Labor Education Center, Rutgers University.
Monthly Review has described Alewitz as “The most prolific U.S. labor muralist since the 1940s,” following in the traditions of “Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros….” An extensive treatment of his early work can be found in “Insurgent Images: The Agitprop Murals of Mike Alewitz” (2002), and work is underway at Central Connecticut State to create a digital collection of sixteen years of artwork and murals by Professor Emeritus Mike Alewitz and his students.
In 2000, Mike Alewitz's "Dreams of Harriet," a series of murals earmarked for placement throughout the city of Baltimore, was decommissioned subsequent to the furor that unfolded because of Alewitz’s rendering of Tubman with a gun and his refusal to disarm her.
Adrienne L. Childs (Moderator) is an independent scholar, art historian and curator. She is adjunct curator at The Phillips Collection, and an associate of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. As former curator at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland she curated many exhibitions, including Her Story: Lithographs by Margo Humphrey; Arabesque: The Art of Stephanie Pogue; Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell and Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art. Her current book is an exploration of blacks in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts, (Forthcoming, Yale University).
In April 2022, The High Museum of Art awarded Childs the 2022 Driskell Prize in recognition of her contribution to African American art and art history. She has held fellowships at the Lunder Institute at the Colby College Museum of Art, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), The Hutchins Center at Harvard University, The Clark Art Institute and the David C. Driskell Center. (https://www.adriennelchilds.