Building a Bright Future: Black Communities and Rosenwald Schools in Tennessee, presented in partnership with Fisk University’s John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, is a community-focused exhibition that highlights the work of alumni, descendants, and organizations to preserve the legacies of Rosenwald Schools across the state.

What are commonly referred to as Rosenwald Schools were the result of an initial partnership between Sears, Roebuck, and Co. president Julius Rosenwald, Tuskegee Institute president Booker T. Washington, and Black Communities throughout the South. Between 1912-1937, that partnership resulted in the construction of almost 5,000 schools for Black children across 15 southern states, including 354 in Tennessee. Rosenwald schools drove improvement in Black educational attainment and helped educate the generation who became leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

Building a Bright Future: Black Communities and Rosenwald Schools in Tennessee leads the visitor through the development of Rosenwald Schools and their legacies by first tracing the history of education for Black Tennesseans beginning with the Reconstruction period. It explores early partnerships between churches, schools and agencies like the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the work of Black leaders, residents, parents, and teachers to improve educational opportunities for Black students. Featured exhibit topics include Black Education before 1912, Black Tennesseans and Rosenwald Schools (1912-1960s), and the Legacies of Rosenwald School Communities.

Partnering with The John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library at Fisk University was essential to developing the exhibit.

Fisk University librarian Arnaud “Arna” Wendell Bontemps acquired the Julius Rosenwald Fund Archives on behalf of the university in 1948. The collection documents the history of the Rosenwald Fund, including the school building program. It is now preserved by the John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Special Collections & Archives.

The Library and Museum teams travelled across the state, making stops in all three Grand Divisions and connecting with many Rosenwald School communities. They met with Rosenwald School alumni and descendants who shared their stories and experiences. The 4,000 square foot exhibit is a culmination of those visits, together with personal alumni and educator accounts, in an effort to highlight 16 of the more than 350 Rosenwald communities in Tennessee. It aims to engage visitors in understanding the history and significance of these schools and the surrounding communities along with current preservation efforts.

Schools, communities and Grand Divisions represented in the show include:

· Dunbar Rosenwald School, Loudon County, East Tennessee
· Hohenwald Rosenwald School, Lewis County, Middle Tennessee
· Lincoln School, Bledsoe County, East Tennessee
· Manassas High School, Shelby County, West Tennessee
· Multiple Schools, Maury County, Middle Tennessee
· Multiple Schools, Sumner County, Middle Tennessee
· Polk-Clark School, Gibson County, West Tennessee
· Smyrna Rosenwald School, Rutherford County, Middle Tennessee
· Tanner School, Cocke County, East Tennessee
· Townsend School, Franklin County, Middle Tennessee
· Trenton Rosenwald School, Gibson County, West Tennessee
· Ward School, Trousdale County, Middle Tennessee
· Warfield School, Montgomery County, Middle Tennessee
· Webb School, Carroll County, West Tennessee
· West Bemis Rosenwald School, Madison County, West Tennessee
· Wilson County Training School, Wilson County, Middle Tennessee

Building a Bright Future: Black Communities and Rosenwald Schools in Tennessee was curated by Matthew Gailani; Debbie Shaw; Tranae Chatman, MBA; Dr. Miranda Fraley Rhodes; and Annabeth Hayes Dooley.

Step into the artwork of renowned multidisciplinary artist Rashid Johnson with this exhibition of The New Black Yoga Installation. Gifted to the DMA by the artist in 2022, this multimedia work combines a video projection and branded Persian rugs to create an experience that is, at once, intense and intimate. The film features five Black men performing an enigmatic dance of ballet, yoga, tai chi, and martial arts across a sun-soaked beach, exploring the complexity of personal and cultural identity. Their choreographed movements reflect Johnson’s ongoing meditations on Black masculinity and mysticism, as well as his investigations of the body in space. Rugs branded with crosshairs, a symbol that is etched into the sand in the video, are situated throughout the gallery, projecting the film’s combined sense of peace and foreboding into physical space.

Rashid Johnson will be honored for his contributions to contemporary art at the 2022 TWO X TWO for AIDS and Art Gala and Auction, a charity auction that benefits both the DMA and amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Focus On: Rashid Johnson is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture.

At the opening of the 20th century, Tennessee was transitioning from a primarily agrarian economy to a mixed one. Artistic tastes would also change in this period. With the advent of photography, hard-edged reality could be captured by a camera much cheaper and truer than a painter could achieve. Artists began to go out with newly invented chemically-produced pigments in paint tubes, and that freed them to paint outdoors from reality, rather than from sketches. Experiments in new ways of depicting the world also very gradually crept into Tennessee as well. Artists represented in this show include Mayna Treanor Avent and Willie Betty Newman, two woman artists who went to Paris in the late nineteenth century to take painting lessons. When they returned home to Tennessee with their newly acquired training, their work brought new ways of showing the world around them. Other artists visited the state, or passed through, including Will Henry Stevens, Rudolph Ingerle, and Ernest Lawson. The Great Depression brought opportunity as well as hardship, with the WPA paying artists to create murals for government buildings across the state. You’ll discover several examples of studies by Dean Cornwell, Luis Mora, and George Davidson in the collection. Following World War II, artists such as Philip Perkins, who had worked in Paris before the war, came back home. European artists like Eugene Vitale Biel-Bienne also came to Tennessee from Paris, and taught other artists. These influences began to move some of our artists to use expressionism, abstraction, and surrealism.

Tennessee artists now are very much attuned to the latest styles and methods used in all forms of artistic expression. Nashville-natives Red Grooms and Robert Ryman have made international names for themselves. Margaret Ellis made a name for herself with a jewelry line, and Richard Jolley is an internationally known glass artist. At the same time our traditional crafts are also thriving. Akira and Larry Blount made dolls that are widely collected. William Edmondson is a legend in outsider sculpture. Wendy Maruyama brought a new style of Studio Furniture to the Appalachian Center for Crafts. Mark Taylor makes some of the finest musical instruments today. All of them are a reminder that the arts are very much alive and well in Tennessee.

From the first inhabitants in what would become Tennessee, thousands of years ago, to people living here today, decorative and utilitarian art have been an important outlet for expressing who we are and how we live. Hand-made objects are a constant in the history of design in Tennessee, and the Museum has gathered in this exhibition the finest collection of artistic expressions from our state. The exhibition begins with Southeastern Indian ancestral figures, celts, pipes, ceramics, and basketry, which continues on to join textiles, ceramics, furniture, silver, jewelry, weapons, paintings, sculpture, prints, toys, photography, and musical instruments of later centuries.

Tennessee at 225: Highlights from the Collection is a self-guided tour within the Museum’s galleries and an online exhibition, showcasing 100 artifacts from the Museum’s collection across five key themes—Art, Community, Innovation, Service, and Transformation. Together, they tell an expansive story about Tennessee, from its First Peoples to the present day. The self-guided tour and online exhibition coincides with the 225th anniversary of Tennessee's Statehood, which commences on June 1, 2021. — Annabeth Hayes and Brigette Jones, Curators

COMMUNITY represents the groups of people who created spaces for themselves based on shared beliefs, ideas, and backgrounds.

INNOVATION offers opportunities to learn about Tennesseans who have used their skills to achieve progress in knowledge, trades, and technology.

ART shares stories and works by self-taught, formally trained, and craft artists who have used their creativity to shape Tennessee’s rich artistic heritage.

TRANSFORMATION explores how Tennessee has transformed politically, geographically, and socially over time.

SERVICE recognizes the contributions of Tennessee “Volunteers” including military veterans, civil rights activists, and other persons who have served their communities