Terra Collection-in-Residence: Tougaloo College

Tougaloo College was founded in Tougaloo, Mississippi, in 1869 by the American Missionary Association (AMA), a nineteenth-century integrated abolitionist society established in Albany, New York, with a mission to eradicate slavery and systems of caste. The Tougaloo College Art Collections were started in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement when a group of activists, curators, and critics formed the New York Art Committee for Tougaloo College. As civil rights protests swirled across the fiercely segregated South, the founders of the Tougaloo art collection envisioned it as “an interracial oasis in which the fine arts are the focus and magnet.”

Terra Foundation loans served as a preamble to Tougaloo’s permanent collection, which is closely associated with the New York School. The loaned works helped tell the story of the intersection of New York School artists and the American Civil Rights Movement. The works functioned as an anchor for the fully re-imagined permanent exhibition space and amplified institutional histories told with the permanent collection.

The objects were featured in the permanent teaching installation called FREEDOM: Abstract Expressionism, Tougaloo College and the Civil Rights Movement, with major support from the Mellon Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Terra Foundation.

“The title, FREEDOM, is inspired by the consistent mantra that was chanted, sung, and shouted during the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Additional inspiration comes from a quote from an unknown art historian who reflected on the art climate in the United States during the 1950s and the 1960s: ‘It is ironic but not contradictory that in a society … in which political repression weighed as heavily as it did in the United States, abstract expressionism was for many the expression of freedom: the freedom to create controversial works of art, the freedom symbolized by action painting, by unbridled expressionism without fetters,’” said Turry Flucker, Terra Foundation Vice President of Collections and Partnerships, and the former Volunteer Director and Curator of Tougaloo College Art Collections.”

Two works were loaned for one year (February–December 2022).