Freedom's Daughters: New Work by Kathy Schumacher
Freedom’s Daughters celebrates Cedar Rapids artist Kathy Schumacher’s new body of work. This collection of paintings depicts the largely-unknown heroines of Black suffrage in the United States, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Where most people have heard of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks, fewer are familiar Nannie Helen Burroughs, founder of the first Black-owned and operated school for girls; Daisy Bates, the force behind the first high school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas and Pauli Murray, a lawyer, professor, writer, and the first Black female Episcopal priest. Schumacher pays homage to these women with richly-colored portraits inspired by historical photographs, accompanied by quotes from each woman read by local Cameroonian-American artist Akwi Nji.
This exhibition and accompanying educational programming have been made possible by the McIntyre Foundation, and by the CRST International Donor-Advised Fund and the Diamond V Corporate Fund of the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation.
Additional annual support has been provided by the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Program Support Grant Fund of the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, members of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, and contributors to the Museum’s Annual Fund. Annual educational programming has been supported in part by Transamerica.
