Enter the world of the award-winning book Beautiful Blackbird!
This exhibit brings Ashley Bryan’s Beautiful Blackbird children’s book to life as you dance with Blackbird, create art, and share your own stories. Come experience Maine’s first gesture animation exhibit on giant book pages and have your loved ones join the flock!
The Museum & Theatre strives to ensure that everyone feels they belong at our facility. We are committed to equitable community participation in the creation of our exhibits and programming, and that our diverse community of visitors sees themselves reflected in our work.
Ashley Bryan’s Beautiful Blackbird Exhibit is designed to engage diverse audiences, explore the perspective that “black is beautiful” and “difference is beautiful,” encourage creative self-expression, foster listening to others, and enable the sharing of stories visually and verbally.
Honoring our mission and following the leadership of Indigo Arts Alliance, we believe it is critical that children– especially Black and Brown children–experience positive identity development where their lives are valued, represented, and celebrated. Storytelling– particularly the call and response nature of traditional storytelling–provides two-way communication and connection. The central honoring message of the children’s book Beautiful Blackbird – “Black is Beautiful”–is the beating heart of this project.
The second floor of the Museum & Theatre’s three-floor complex entails several galleries that focus on arts, culture, and community. Specifically, the Lunder Arts and Culture Gallery on the north side of the building houses the Beautiful Blackbird exhibit.
The exhibit was inspired by our experience as a partner in Indigo Arts Alliance’s 2020 Beautiful Blackbird Children’s Book Festival. Their efforts to support and promote black authors and illustrators in storytelling for children planted the seed for our collaborative work on this project.
Components of Beautiful Blackbird Exhibit:
Introduction to fine artist, author, and illustrator Ashley Bryan
Gesture Animation Experience, Visitors Become a Avatar Character in the Beautiful Blackbird Story
Makerspace Art Studio Activity Inspired by Ashley Bryan
Share Your Story Kiosk Visitor Recording Experience
Artist Gallery Exhibit curated by Marcia Minter
Where?
Second Floor
Access Info
Beautiful Blackbird:
• The video features closed captioning;
• Gesture animation activity requires some body gestures but not full body movement;
• Gallery wall didactics are hung at an ADA compliant height
Small Workshop- Kitchen Classroom:
• ADA accessible handwashing sink;
• Mixed height tables and chairs;
• Adaptive cooking tools available (depending on project/recipe).
Large Workshop- Makerspace:
• The workshop tables and sink are ADA compliant;
• Easy grip scissors and paint brushes available (when applicable);
• Silicone grip straps available to use with art supplies or hand tools (when applicable and safe).
Beautiful Blackbird exhibit in the Lunder Arts & Culture Gallery
Learn about author and artist Ashley Bryan and step into the gesture animation exhibit.
Creating Pathways. Drawing the Map. Opening Doors.
Art exhibit showcasing works by Black illustrators.
Arts & Culture Gallery made possible by a generous gift from
The Lunder Foundation
Beautiful Blackbird Exhibit made possible by a generous gift from The Valdmanis Family
and supported by a generous gift from the Maine Humanities Council’s Major Grants Program.
Tell Your Story Kiosk
Step into the kiosk, record a story about what makes you special, and share it with others.
Art Inspired by Ashley: Make a Puppet
Make a puppet in the style of artist Ashley Bryan, famed for creating found object puppets from beach finds.
More About the Beautiful Blackbird Exhibit
Introduction to Ashley Bryan
Ashley Bryan is a celebrated Maine artist and storyteller. Born in 1923, Ashley was raised in the Bronx, NY. At seventeen, he entered the tuition-free Cooper Union School of Art and Engineering, having been denied entry elsewhere because of his race. Encouraged by supportive high school teachers, Ashley was told, “Apply to Cooper Union; they do not see you there.” Admission was based solely on a student’s exam portfolio.
Drafted out of art school into the segregated US army at age nineteen, Ashley preserved his humanity throughout World War II by drawing, stowing supplies in his gas mask when necessary. After the war, Ashley completed his Cooper Union degree, studied philosophy and literature at Columbia University on the GI Bill, and then went to Europe on a Fulbright scholarship, seeking to understand why humans choose war.
Ashley returned to the United States, teaching art at several schools and universities, retiring in the 1980s to Maine’s Cranberry Isles as professor emeritus of Dartmouth College. Meanwhile, Ashley published books—more than fifty to date. Among Ashley’s awards are the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the New York Public Library’s Literary Lions award. Throughout the United States and Africa, libraries, children’s rooms, and literary festivals are named for him. As much as Ashley is humbled by these honors, it is the joy of creation, the excitement he sees in children’s eyes, that delights him most.
Gesture Animation Exhibit with Beautiful Blackbird Illustrations
The first of its kind in Maine, this gesture animation exhibit interprets and projects elements of the Beautiful Blackbird book onto Transformit Fabric Architecture and allows visitors to experience interactive “call and response” gesture animation. That is, visitors enter the story as a bird avatar. Just like the birds in Beautiful Blackbird visitors are taught to dance the “show claws slide'' and get to meet Blackbird himself. Generously, Blackbird gives every visitor a unique touch of black reinforcing the heart of the story: “Black is beautiful” and “difference is beautiful.”
Musical soundtrack is written and played by local musician Samuel James and engineered by Stone Mountain Sound. Animation is created by Sputnik Animation. Project was led by Chris Sullivan of Sullivan Creative Consulting and completed through consultation with Daniel Minter, Artistic Director at Indigo Arts Alliance.
MakerSpace Art Studio Activity
The MakerSpace is where outside inspiration meets individual self-expression through art, tinkering, making and engineering. The MakerSpace activity that coincides with Ashley Bryan’s Beautiful Blackbird Exhibit is designed with partners Indigo Arts Alliance and is infused with Ashley Bryan’s artistic style.
In his autobiography, Ashley Bryan: Words to my Life’s Song, Ashley writes “I have always sought to create something useful, something beautiful, with objects that have been cast-off, disregarded.” We invite families to do what Ashley does--transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Come use found objects and power tools to make and engineer sculptures that give a new life to everyday objects. Each visitor group will get their own tray of everyday objects such as bubble wrap, foil, and natural materials to create stand-alone sculptures to take home or add to a larger installation within the MakerSpace.
Additional programs and activities will include found object puppets, poetry and art workshops, engineering challenges as well as opportunities to create alongside special guest illustrators, artists, and authors.
Share Your Story Kiosk Visitor Recording
Share Your Story Kiosk is a storytelling kiosk that allows children and families to document and share their own story visually and verbally. This unique exhibit element is created by Brad Larson Media.
The kiosk highlights the stories of four featured artists of color, curated by Indigo Arts Alliance, who reflect on their inspirations and process of creating art. After listening to the stories of artists, visitors get to use the kiosk to photograph, document, and share the story of their own art. This experiential activity allows children to gain a deeper understanding of their creation process and build self-confidence.
Children can also discover and listen to the stories of other children. The kiosk elevates each story and shows value in each individual person. Children will see, hear and realize that other children's stories have similarities and differences, and they all have value.
After recording, the world of sharing unfolds. Children and families get the option to send their story recording to friends and family and/or share with the broader Museum & Theatre community. The story telling becomes a digital keepsake to be shared and kept as a memory of an important experience in a child’s life and a family's memories.
Artist Gallery Exhibit
The Artist Gallery is curated by Marcia Minter, Co-founder and Executive Director of Indigo Arts Alliance. The gallery features 16 prints from 14 of the most renowned children’s book illustrators. Ashley Bryan was the first Black children’s book author and illustrator. His talents and triumphs paved the way for the brilliant work exhibited in the Artist Gallery.
Each print exhibited was carefully selected from a very special children’s picture book. Visitors are invited to examine each piece of art for the story it tells within the page and also discover new narratives and themes that form through viewing the gallery as a whole.
“The artists featured in this exhibition, represent just some of the Black creators whom Ashley admires. You see, excellence rubs off on everyone it touches. Each and everyone of these illustrators look up to Mr. Bryan and know that their dreams were a little easier to accomplish because of his legacy.”
Marcia Minter, Co-founder and Executive Director of Indigo Arts Alliance stands in front of the Artist Gallery.
Artists whose work is represented in the exhibit include the following:
Munir D. Mohammed, Wherever I Go by Mary Wagley Copp (Simon & Schuster)
Ken Daley, Auntie Luce's Talking Paintings by Francie Latour (Groundwood Books)
Kaylani Juanita, Magnificent Homespun Brown by Samara Cole Doyon (Tilbury House)
Daniel Minter, So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth's Long Walk Toward Freedom by Gary D. Schmidt (Roaring Book Press) and Going Down Home with Daddy by Kelly Starling Lyons (Peach Tree Publishing).
Tim Bowers, Memoirs of a Tortoise by Devin Scillian (Sleeping Bear Press)
E.B. Lewis Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis by Jabari Asim (Penguin Young Readers Group)
Jan Spivey Gilchrist, The Great Migration: Journey to the North by Eloise Greenfield (HarperCollins)
Oge Mora, Thank you, Omu! (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
April Harrison, Nana Akua Goes to School. (Penguin/Random House)
Ekua Holmes, The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer (Candlewick Press)
Pat Cummings, Ananse and the Lizard: A West African Tale (Henry Holt and Co.)
Jerry Pinkney, The Lion & the Mouse (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Rudy Gutierrez, Double Bass Blues by Andrea J. Loney (Penguin/Random House)
Javaka Steptoe, Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
EXHIBIT PARTNERS
Marcia Minter, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Indigo Arts Alliance – Serving as Exhibit Consultant
Marcia Minter is a seasoned creative professional, dedicated arts advocate and community leader deeply committed to social and cultural activism. Her work on numerous boards represents the interest of underrepresented voices, talents and citizen constituents. She has spent her professional career as an Executive Creative Director for some of the world’s most iconic brands. Her curatorial work focuses on photography, symposiums on the intersection of art and social practice, exhibition planning and implementation. Currently she serves on the Maine Arts Commission, the Board of Directors for Maine Media Workshops and College, Portland Ovations and is a Trustee of the Portland Museum of Art.
Daniel Minter, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Indigo Arts Alliance - Serving as Exhibit Consultant and Featured Artist
Daniel Minter is an American artist known for his work in the mediums of painting and assemblage. He is a visual storyteller and accomplished illustrator. Minter’s artwork reflects abiding themes of displacement and diaspora; ordinary/extraordinary blackness; spirituality in the Afro-Atlantic world; and the (re)creation of meanings of home. Minter’s paintings, carvings, block prints, and sculptures have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at galleries and museums. He is the co-founder and creative visionary of the Portland Freedom Trail, a system of granite and bronze markers that constitutes a permanent walking trail highlighting the people, places, and events associated with the anti-slavery movement in Portland. Minter’s work also marks the Malaga Island Trail which remembers the Black, European and Native American residents of the island who were forcibly removed by the state of Maine in 1912. He has illustrated over a dozen children’s books and has been commissioned twice to create Kwanzaa stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. Minter teaches at the Maine College of Art.
Indigo Arts Alliance
Indigo Arts Alliance connects Black and Brown artists from around the world with Maine’s artists of African descent through a multidisciplinary artist-in-residence program that embodies a Back-led approach to creativity, community building, and mentoring. We believe art is a vital means of expression and artists play a key role in building a healthy mult-racial democracy.
Educators Toolkit for Beautiful Blackbird Festival 2021
Ashley Bryan, Ashely Bryan Center – Serving on Exhibit Advisory Committee.
The Ashley Bryan Center was created in 2013 to “preserve, celebrate, and share broadly artist Ashley Bryan’s work and his joy of discovery, invention, learning, and community. The Ashley Bryan Center (ABC) will promote opportunities for people to come together in the creation and appreciation of visual art, literature, music, and the oral and written traditions of poetry. The Center is fiercely committed to fostering cultural understanding and personal pride through scholarship, exhibitions, and opportunities in the Arts. The ABC is working with colleges and museums to place more of Ashley’s art in Maine where Ashley Bryan has lived and worked for the past 60 years.
Chris Sullivan Creative Consulting LLC - Chris Sullivan
Christopher Sullivan is an educator, exhibit developer, and arts consultant. He believes that the goal of art is to bring people together, and for that reason he has a passion for collaborative projects. Chris is currently an associate professor of Fine Arts at Saint Joseph's College and owner of Chris Sullivan Creative Consulting LLC. Chris received a BFA from the University of Maine at Presque Isle and MFA in studio art from Maine College of Art. Chris is active in the arts community in Portland, where he lives with his wife and two sons.