Dr. Barbara Lewis, director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black History and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is collaborating with Artward Bound, a Massachusetts College of Art youth enrichment program, and the Boston Art Commission, led by Karin Goodfellow, for a summer 2015 series of talks, workshops, and exhibits on endurance as a theme to highlight, examine, and reflect Boston’s emerald resilience. 

Artward Bound students will create art inspired by nature’s variety and persistence for an Art Grove installation, planned for Franklin Park in August. The month-long installation, which will juxtapose the ephemeral and the enduring, is organized by Carolyn Lewenberg. L’Merchie Frazier, a bricolage artist in a range of media and Museum of African American History education director, will conduct the summer art and literature workshops for youth encompassing diverse cultural traditions.  The workshops will additionally emphasize environmental equilibrium and justice, and will include a tour of the Brookline homestead of Emerald Necklace creator Frederick Law Olmsted, an often-overlooked local treasure.  

Olmsted’s name is synonymous with big American parks. His genius was creating extensive and beautiful landscapes that appeared natural but were carefully engineered. He had huge plans, and one of the largest was Franklin Park, also known as the Emerald Necklace, built from 1878 to 1896 and not yet complete. Olmsted wanted to connect the city through a linked series of nature preserves, which he conceived of as a democratic garden, drawing everyone, rich and poor, together on common ground.
The Trotter participation in this program is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency which is funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, administrated by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. The Boston Arts Commission is funding the work of local artists who will create work on the project theme of endurance, which Dr. Lewis chose to honor Frederick Olmsted, who took many career twists and turns before finding his artistic medium in nature.