Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art To Host The Pennington Lecture With Annette Gordon-Reed

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will host The Pennington Lecture with Annette Gordon-Reed on Thursday, February 20, 2025.

The legacy of Juneteenth, America’s new holiday that marks the end of slavery, continues to influence our understanding of freedom and our fight for racial justice. Annette Gordon-Reed, a MacArthur Fellow and the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize for History, is one of the integral voices who brought Juneteenth into the national conversation. Her New York Times bestselling book about this profound day—On Juneteenth—is a powerful, essential work of history that weaves America’s past with personal memoir. Gordon-Reed captures the importance of the holiday to American history and reflects on the decades-long effort to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday.

About Freedomways

On view through March 30, 2025

Decades of freedom-fighting produced a justice-oriented culture of celebration that would help redefine American popular culture through faith and worship, labor and leisure. From Emancipation Jubilees to Lincoln’s Birthday and Frederick Douglass Day events, to contemporary Emancipation Day and Juneteenth programs, recognition, reflection, and celebration have always accompanied freedom’s milestones.

Drawing on the Amistad Center for Art & Culture’s collection, Freedomways features art by Hank Willis Thomas, Ed Dwight, Charly Palmer, Richard Yarde, Margaret Burroughs, and others.

The Pennington Lecture is presented in honor of the Rev. Dr. James W. C. Pennington and is part of CT State Community College Capital’s Black Heritage Project. The project aims to surface the remarkable history of the first Black church and school for Black children in Hartford through an exhibition on Hartford’s Black community formation (now on view at the college), curriculum in a variety of courses, and programs such as this.

The Pennington Lecture is produced by CT State Community College Capital in partnership with the Wadsworth Atheneum and The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, and in association with Faith Congregational Church.