Forgotten no more
Letter-sized sheets of translucent vellum, each held in place by two copper nails, line the walls of the Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh. The sheets represent the remains of individuals unearthed in 2008, during an archaeological excavation of the former Newburgh Colored Burial Ground, where African Americans were interred during the 19th century.
The excavation resulted from the disturbance of unmarked graves during the construction of an addition to the former Broadway School, which was converted into the City of Newburgh Courthouse. The school was built atop part of the burial ground in 1908, at the corner of Broadway and Robinson Avenue.
Titled “From the Ground UP,” the exhibition at the Ann Street Gallery features an installation by Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, an artist who resides in Plattekill, N.Y. The exhibition opened in December and continues through the end of March.
Behind the sheets of vellum, Superville Sovak tacked pages from a draft report filed in March 2017 by Landmark Archaeology of Altamont, N.Y., which the City of Newburgh hired to conduct the excavation. Each page features a photo of a gravesite and a sketch of its contents. During the course of the exhibition, most of the pages were removed as work by other artists was added.
Superville Sovak also stitched together swathes of fabric, such as blankets and quilts, and suspended them among the five columns within the gallery. The fabric represents shrouds in which bodies were buried.
“From the Ground Up” includes art by Lillian Alberti, Michelle Corporan, Donna Francis, Stevenson Estime, Shanni Richards, and Edwin Torres, as well as a collection of books from Que Bey-Ali of A Little Light Bookstore and Educational Center for Culture, History, and Freedom. The gallery director is Alison McNulty.
Starting in the fall, the gallery hosted events related to the exhibition, including Letters to the Ancestors, Conjuring the Ancestors, and Songs for the Ancestors. The letters were placed on the suspended fabric.
In 2008, the remains of 99 individuals from the burial ground were stored at SUNY New Paltz, where bioarchaeologist Kenneth Nystrom, who worked on the excavation, serves as an assistant professor of anthropology. The City of Newburgh plans to inter those remains in a memorial to be built at Downing Park. On Feb. 22, the designers of that memorial — Studio HIP of Ossining and PUSH Studio of Washington, D.C. — made a presentation to the Newburgh City Council.
