MS01.03.03 - Box 01 - Folder 02 - Amistad II - Art Caravan Correspondence, 1973-1974

HOWARD E. SPRAGG, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

UNITED CHURCH BOARD FOR HOMELAND MINISTRIES

DIVISION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION WESLEY A. HOTCHKISS, GENERAL SECRETARY

GRANT SPRADLING, CONSULTANT IN THE ARTS 287 PARK AVENUE SOUTH, NEW YORK, N. Y. 10010

[Handwritten] 475-2121

June 6, 1973

Mr. David Driskell 1601 Phillips Street Nashville, Tennessee 37208

Dear David:

This will confirm our meeting June 18, 11:00 a.m., 287 Park Avenue South, New York City. We will consider the Art Fleet Project idea. Please keep a record of your travel expenses for reimbursement. If there are any problems, please contact me at your early convenience.

Sincerely, Grant Spradling [signature] Grant Spradling

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Division of Higher Education and AMA Involvement in Bicentennial Commemoration (?)

sense of identity and pride within the denomination.

Incidentally, Paul, I will be having lunch with Robert Moss on Friday and hope

to have an opportunity to raise this concern with him at that time.

Attached is also a statemnt drafted by Grant and given to Ted Erickson to be

included in a proposal that Ted was working on.

WAH/c

AFRO-AMERICAN ART CARAVAN

Background

In the summer of 1839, "Rumors raced along the coast, growing from mouth to mouth, added to by every teller, spread by newsmen whose imagination had been kindled by the sound of mystery and danger. Some said she was a pirate schooner bent on looting lonely coastal vessels and towns. Some swore she was the Flying Dutchman beating her way through the seven seas. Others identified her correctly as the Spanish slaver whose cargo had risen and killed the captain and crew. Word of such a mutiny had come from Nuevitas in the island of Cuba — word that twenty-six whites had perished at the hands of the black cannibals on board . . . . Her master was an African named Cinque and her destination the slave coast, from which he had lately been stolen . . . but the wanderings of both master and schooner were stranger than mind could imagine, their effect on the institution of slavery greater than words could measure."

Myths about our thirty year anti-slavery struggle suffice for us, and yet the truism that truth is stranger than fiction was never so apt as in the case of the Amistad mutiny.

The lithograph of Cinque by John Sheffield published in the "New London Gazette" in August 1839 helped make it impossible to ignore the humanity of the stolen [underlined] Mendis [/underlined] and must have been a decisive factor as John Quincy Adams argued before the United States Supreme Court that Cinque and his people were indeed human and not cargo to be returned to the jurisdiction of Her Majesty the Queen of Spain. No doubt it was the artist’s stroke which gave eloquent advocacy to Cinque’s human dignity and played a fundamental role in the movement to better the life of the American Negro.

Although the incident has been forgotten largely except to scholars, reverberations from the Amistad mutiny still affect the lives of all Americans and, especially, those of African descent. The establishment of a large number of American Negro colleges can be directly traced to that event.

Over the years these schools have been given superb and highly valuable works of art and documents—among them the Stieglietz Collection of art works at Fisk University and the Amistad File of historical documents at Dillard University. The art collection at Tougaloo College, for example, is one of the finest collections in the state of Mississippi, and yet it fails to have the impact such a collection warrents.

Afro-American Art Caravan

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The Bicentennial of the founding of our country seems an appropriate time to take these art treasures to the people and to dramatize a noble movement in the nation’s history.

Therefore, it is proposed:

(1) An art caravan of tractor trailers be assembled to tour the nation—especially the South along stops on the Underground Railroad—beginning in the summer of 1975 and continuing through the Bicentennial period.

(2) The caravan contain a selection of the finest works of art from collections of Negro colleges and supplemented with pertinent works of art from other sources. (For example, the portrait of Cinque by Nathaniel Jocelyn might be borrowed from the New Haven Colonial Historical Society.)

(3) A staff accompanies the caravan to act as animators who give background and involvement in the traveling exhibit and who dramatize in some way the several hundred years of black life in America.

(4) That an advance team should preceed the caravan to help develop ways in which the community can express its own esthetic aspiration in conjunction with the caravan experience. Local works should be shown with the travelling collection, and the theatre should provide dramatization of local legends.

Development and design of the caravan will be under the guidance of an advisory board drawing from Negro colleges, Afro-American institutes and institutions which have experience in mobile art. And guidance will be sought from the National Endowment for the Arts.

[underline] The Program [/underline]

[underline] The Name [/underline]

"Afro-American* Art Caravan" is a working title for this project and should be considered only as such. Since the name will so greatly determine people’s expectations of the caravan and will to some

_______________________ *Afro-American, black and Negro are used interchangeably in this working document.

Afro-American Art Caravan

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extent determine the art shown and the general thrust of the project, the name should be selected with great care and should be selected by those individuals, institutions and instrumentalities that will benefit most and to whom this project will be the most important.

[underline] Equipment [/underline]

The caravan will consist of three tractor trailer units, two of which will be artmobiles and one a mobile mixed media theatre.

[underline] The Art [/underline]

The artmobiles will contain works of art by Afro-Americans and African artists. The works will be assembled by Fisk University museum science program. The exhibition will be drawn from the collections of Negro colleges and supplemented with pertinent works of art from other sources. The inventory of Afro-American artists and works carried out by ARBC will be a valuable resource.

A print and photograph collection will also be developed for use in advance and in conjunction with the visit of the caravan.

[underline] The Theatre [/underline]

The mixed media theatre will function in four ways: (1) Using projections, sounds and lights, it will present a continuous orientation to the collection and portray episodes about the role of the Afro-Americans in the first 200 years of American history; (2) it will be a theatre in which the staff-company of the caravan present live performances; (3) it will be a place for improvizational theatre to portray local legends; (4) when possible, it will be utilized by local performing groups. It will be designed so that these functions may intermix. For example, screens and projection equipment that are used for the art orientation presentations may also be used as rear projection for the live theatre performance. An established Negro theatre company will be commissioned to design these productions.

[underline] The Staff [/underline]

An unusual feature of the caravan will be that the staff will be selected not only for those administrative and public relations skills essential to the successful operation of such a venture, but they will also be selected because of their individual performing talents so that the staff will be the performing company. All of these individuals will be professional performers and the conditions of their employment will in every way conform to union requirements and good, professional theatrical management standards.