Details
Date
May 28, 2025
Time
12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Description
On display in the lobby of the Fort Negley Visitors Center.
The exhibit is free and open to the public and runs through the end of May.
"The choice to house this exhibit at Fort Negley is also an invitation to think about embodiment and power. Following the capture of Nashville by Union troops, this fortification was built by free and enslaved Black laborers. Many of these people died during this process and few of them received payment for their work. In 2019, Fort Negley was named a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “Site of Memory” to acknowledge its ties to enslavement and to honor the communities of descendants with connections to the fortification.
In the wake of the war, many of the surviving Black laborers who built and maintained Fort Negley remained in Nashville, building communities of their own such as the Edgehill and former Bass Street neighborhoods. The historically Black neighborhood of North Nashville was similarly developed by Black laborers who supported Union efforts to fortify the State Capital.
Choosing this site asks exhibition guests to consider long histories of racial capitalism and injustice that have shaped Black lives and spaces in Nashville, at the same time that it heralds the efforts of artists, activists, and residents to build community and resist forces of dispossession and displacement."
Be sure to join artist Ashley Seay for a blockprinting workshop.
Sponsored by: Tennessee Arts Commission, Vanderbilt University, The Curb Center, Metro Parks