Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901)
January 24, 2025 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) runs from 25 January 2025 – 6 April 2025.
Vernissage: Friday 24 January @ 7:00 pm
Curator: Dr. David Woods. Organized and circulated by the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, and the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS).
Hidden Blackness is the first major exhibition of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s work ever presented in Canada—124 years after the artist’s death.
Born in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, Bannister was a self-taught, nineteenth-century, African American/Canadian painter of the Barbizon school known for pastoral landscapes and seascapes. In 1876, Bannister’s painting Under the Oaks (now lost) won the bronze medal (first place) at the Centennial Exposition Art Exhibition in Philadelphia, thus making him the first artist of African descent and the first Canadian to win a major art prize in North America.
Before becoming a full-time painter, Bannister worked as a cobbler, shipmate, barber, and daguerreotypist. He was also a prominent abolitionist and philanthropist (along with his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannister), and a respected art critic and co-founder the Providence Art Club, one of the oldest art societies in the United States.
“Hidden Blackness will give the Canadian public its first glimpse of the creativity and excellence of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s artistry, while also providing an important opportunity to examine his early years in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, as well as the life of nineteenth-century Black New Brunswickers in communities like Slabtown.” —Dr. David Woods
owens@mta.ca
