New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Haiti

Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Honored With Black Heritage Postal Stamp

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Lewis StampThe United States Postal Service will issued the 45th Black Heritage stamp on January 26th, 2022 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. in honor of Edmonia Lewis, a Black and Native American sculptor who gained international recognition.

Edmonia Lewis was born in 1844 to an Ojibwa/Chippewa woman from Albany and a former enslaved man from Haiti. Both parents died when Wildfire, as she was called, was young. She went to live with her mother’s sisters. In later years her brother Samuel supported her and in 1856 she entered New York Central College. She then went to Oberlin College in Ohio from 1859 to 1863. [Read more…] about Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Honored With Black Heritage Postal Stamp

Making Sense of the Haitian Revolution in Early America

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ben_franklins_worldWhat did the American Revolution mean and achieve? What sort of liberty and freedom did independence grant Americans and which Americans should receive them?

Americans grappled with these questions soon after the American Revolution. They debated these issues during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in the first congresses, and as they followed events in revolutionary France and Haiti during the 1790s and early 1800s. [Read more…] about Making Sense of the Haitian Revolution in Early America

Corset Portraits of the Loves of Aaron Burr

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Madame+Jume_RGB.BillOrcuttArtist Camilla Huey has a close to the skin interpretation of founding father Aaron Burr. While we know about his schemes to gain and keep political power, Huey tempts us to think about Burr’s gender politics. Was the former Vice-President who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, a full-fledged Lothario, or might there be another story?

The film “The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Binding and Corsetry”  premiering at Symphony Space at 95th St. and Broadway in Manhattan on Saturday, November 14 at noon offers a much more complicated and nuanced view of the man and his significant female others.  As Thomas Paine wrote in that revolutionary era “If we take a survey of the countries and the ages… we will find the women adored and oppressed. Man who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power,  in paying homage to their beauty has always availed himself of their weakness… at once their tyrant and their slave.” [Read more…] about Corset Portraits of the Loves of Aaron Burr