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Simon’s
Rock partners with James Weldon
Johnson Foundation
to honor local Harlem Renaissance
writer
By
Hannah Van Sickle Monday, Jun 26
2017 (The Bershire Edge)
On
Saturday, June 24, the restoration
of Johnson
cabin and nearby home, and the
envisioned reestablishment of his
historic place in the cultural
life of Great Barrington took some
major steps closer to realization.
At a gathering held on the Johnson
home site on Alford Road, James
Weldon Johnson Foundation
President Rufus Jones, Johnson Literary
Executor Jill Rosenberg Jones and
Bard College at Simon Rock
provost Ian Bickford announced to
125 assembled guests their
partnership to promote Johnson legacy
through innovative programming,
including artists;
residencies. Silent and live
auctions raised more than $27,000
for the restoration of the
property.
Next month, the five visual
artists who have been awarded the
inaugural James Weldon Johnson
Artist Residency will visit Great
Barrington and draw inspiration
from Johnson's
former summer home -Five Acres-as
well as the bucolic Berkshire
Hills where the noted author,
lyricist, poet, diplomat, attorney
and leader of the NAACP found his
own muse nearly a century ago.
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The Artists selected for the
residency. From left, Jill Rosenberg Jones
and her son Jacob Jones,Meclina
Priestley,
Cheryl R. Riley, Selwyn Garraway,Susan
Powers, and Daniel Hibbert,
Rufus Jonesand,
Ian Bickford – Provost, Simon’s Rock
Great
Barrington — James Weldon
Johnson, a founder and senior member of the
Harlem Renaissance and the lyricist for the
NAACP anthem Lift Every Voice and
Sing, wrote his most popular and
famous works, God’s Trombones and his
autobiography, Along This Way,
from his secluded writing cabin in Great
Barrington on a hill overlooking Alford
Brook.
James
Weldon Johnson’s writing cabin overlooking
Alford Brook. Photo: David Scribner
The James
Weldon Johnson Foundation partners
with Bard College at Simon’s Rock to
launch an artist residency. Johnson once
said, “A people may become great through
many means, but there is only one measure
by which its greatness is recognized and
acknowledged. The final measure of the
greatness of all peoples is the amount and
standard of the literature and art they
have produced.” As if fitting, the goals
of the Residency program will be to
support both established and emerging
visual artists, writers, scholars and
others whose work exemplifies the values
to which James Weldon Johnson dedicated
his life: social equity, creative
expression, erudition, social justice and
community.
The James
Weldon Johnson Foundation was established
in June 2016; its mission is to advance
the legacy of James Weldon Johnson through
educational, intellectual and artistic
works that impact the contemporary world
and exemplify Johnson’s enduring
contributions to American history and
worldwide culture. The Foundation
preserves Five Acres, the summer home
where Johnson spent time, and his writing
cabin. The latter building, one of few of
its kind remaining in the United States,
is undergoing a meticulous restoration,
the goal of which is to allow visitors to
instantly imagine Johnson at work at his
original desk.
Bard
College at Simon’s Rock Provost Ian
Bickford speaking to the gathering at
the James Weldon Johnson homestead. To
his right is Johnson’s literary
executive, Jill Rosenberg Jones.
"Ideally,
these artists will find creative
inspiration in each other, in the Simon’s
Rock community and in the surrounding
natural world."
The artists will be offered studio space
in the Daniel Arts Center, one of the
premiere facilities in the region, located
on the bucolic 220-acre campus of Bard
College at Simon’s Rock Campus in Great
Barrington.
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