Online Panel Discussion: Hidden Blackness
This is a free event and open to the public
ASL and live automatic captions will be available
Registration is required
Join panellists Mary McCarthy Brandt, Thandiwe McCarthy, Aleya Michaud, Harvey Amani Whitfield, and David Woods for a riveting conversation about the long history of Black communities in the Maritime Provinces. This panel discussion is organized in conjunction with Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901), the first major exhibition of the artist’s work ever presented in Canada. 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.
Aleya Michaud is a Black Acadian artist from Grand Falls, New Brunswick, now based in Riverview. A self-taught artist, she is driven by an intuitive and exploratory approach to painting and drawing, embracing play as both a creative process and a way of engaging with the world. She serves as Assistant Director of Galerie Sans Nom and is a member of the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Galerie Sans Nom and the Tidnish Bridge Art Gallery, with additional group showings at Gallery on Queen. She was recently an Artist in Residence at the Dieppe Arts and Culture Centre.
Dr. Mary McCarthy Brandt is a distinguished scholar with a PhD in Social Justice from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. In 2015, she set a legal precedent with her landmark human rights case against Shoppers Drug Mart, which successfully challenged racial profiling. In 2022, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from St. Thomas University, followed by the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2023. She is a proud sixth-generation African descendent in New Brunswick, whose great-great-great-great-great grandmother arrived in 1783 after fleeing a plantation in Virginia, USA.
Thandiwe McCarthy is a seventh-generation, African Canadian spoken word poet, writer, and public speaker. After a residency at Arteles, Finland, he began focusing on his writing practice. As the culture correspondent for Maritime EDIT magazine, he highlights Black community leaders and artists. He has delivered keynotes for the Atlantic Public Libraries Association and the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design’s 2024 graduation, and he has lectured on leadership at Saint Thomas University. He was a co-founder of the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance and he has played a key role in helping to recognize August 1st as Emancipation Day in New Brunswick.
Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield is the Centennial Carnegie Chair in the History of Slavery in Canada at the University of King’s College (Halifax, NS). His area of research interest is Black migration—coerced and free—to the Maritimes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Whitfield is the author of several books including Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860; North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes; Biographical Dictionary of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes; Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents; and The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777-1810.
Dr. David Woods is a largely self-taught, multidisciplinary artist and arts organization leader from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He was the organizer of the province’s first Black History Month (1984) and the founder of several arts and cultural organizations, including the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (1992). He has curated pioneering exhibitions of African Nova Scotian art, such as In This Place (1998), which featured over 100 years of African Nova Scotian artmaking, The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts (2012-2024), and Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901).
Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) is organized and circulated by the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, and the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (BANNS).
