The Riches of Family: An American Journey from Slavery to Prosperity and As Long as the Waters Flow: Native Americans in the South and East

October 25, 2002 - February 02, 2003

United Company Contemporary Regional Art Gallery

Exhibit Details

As Long As the Waters Flow: Native Americans in the South and East: thirty-six large black and white photographs by North Carolina photographer Carolyn DeMeritt provide a beautiful documentation of many well-known and not-so-well-known Native American tribes in the southern United States. Frye Gaillard, a North Carolina author, has written text and an introduction for this exhibition which is both beautiful and fertile ground for educational opportunities.

And as a companion exhibit: The Riches of Family: An American Journey from Slavery to Prosperity. In one generation, artist Rock Hyman’s ancestral family went from being freed Virginia slaves in 1866 to owning 2,000 acres of oil-producing property in Texas. In 1983, Hyman discovered over 300 photographs documenting his family legacy and began a life-long project of interpreting the photographs onto canvas with his paintbrush. The ten images in this show feature both the photographic image as well as its painting counterpart and tell the story of one family’s migration following the Civil War, like so many others from Virginia to Texas, to the promise of prosperity in the west.

Organized and on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.