Birmingham Museum Of Art Acquires 'Three Marys: Freedom Riders' By Dawn Williams Boyd

Fort Gansevoort has announced that Three Marys: Freedom Riders by Dawn Williams Boyd has been acquired by the Birmingham Museum of Art.

This mixed media cloth painting is part of Boyd's Three Marys series, which draws influence from the biblical scene of the women present during Jesus's crucifixion. Here, Boyd utilizes the religious motif as a visual framework to illustrate 1960s Civil Rights protesters, known as the Freedom Riders, in the American South.

The work's composition is based on a photograph taken by Theodore Gaffney in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, May 14, 1961. The image documents peaceful protestors fleeing a hostile white mob who attempted to trap them inside a burning Greyhound bus. Boyd's piece commemorates this tragic event and pays homage to the legacy of the Freedom Riders' fight for social justice in the face of physical violence and political inequity.

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