Hudson Valley History Reimagined: Vinnie Bagwell's Portraits of Enslaved Youth

This exhibition was an effort to bring awareness to aspects of our region’s history that are so frequently left out of the dominant narrative, timed to Juneteenth, a day that memorializes the emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. and is celebrated on June 19th. Yonkers-based artist Vinnie Bagwell’s bronze statues of African youth pay tribute to people separated from their families and their homes and sold into slavery in a foreign land. A slide show of a local family album reminds us that Black families not only worked the land but were owners of farmland nearby. Works on paper from the Loeb collection were included as a backdrop for the often-untold stories of African families and their descendants. The exhibition was on view in the In the Spotlight space, which reflects a commitment to broaden, and amplify, the voices represented in the museum setting, and to ensure that our programs and practices that place the Loeb in conversation with our communities.

Support for In the Spotlight is provided by Mary Ellen Weisl Rudolph ’61, P ’98 and James N. Rudolph P ’98. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.