The Portraits of Freedom art exhibition, presented by Stephen F. Austin State University’s Ralph W. Steen Library, will be displayed Saturday, June 13, through Friday, Sept. 25, at the Nacogdoches Railroad Depot, 101 Old Tyler Road. Exhibition hours are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.
Portraits of Freedom is a juried student art exhibition featuring runaway slaves from newspaper advertisements compiled by the Texas Runaway Slave Project. The exhibition will feature drawings, lithographs, paintings and screen prints created by art students at SFA, Texas Christian University and Lamar University.
Sponsors of the exhibition include SFA, Nacogdoches Jaycees, Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce, the City of Nacogdoches and the Texas Blueberry Festival.
A formal opening for the exhibition will be at 5 p.m. Thursday, June 11, at the Nacogdoches Courthouse Annex, 203 W. Main St. The evening will include guest speakers, Drs. Daina Ramey Berry from the University of Texas at Austin and Douglas B. Chambers from the University of Southern Mississippi, discussing the history of Juneteenth and runaway slaves in the Atlantic World. The reception is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The exhibition will continue through Sept. 25. Hours are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. The reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Kyle Ainsworth, special collections librarian for the East Texas Research Center, located in the Steen Library, at (936) 468-1590 or email ainswortk@sfasu.edu.
