A place to keep the memory of Nina Simone alive: artists in New York, with the support of Venus Williams, have auctioned their works to transform the birthplace of the soul diva and civil rights activist into a cultural site.
The property, a modest pillared house with a porch and wood-plank facades, is located on a hilltop in the small community of Tryon, in rural Southeastern North Carolina.
It was up for sale in 2017 when four artists, Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton, bought it back for $95,000 lest it disappear.
“Nina Simone fought for an inclusive and diverse America,” says Adam Pendleton. “Giving people the opportunity to see and visit his birthplace,” “is a way to keep his legacy, his music alive for future generations,” he adds to AFP at New York’s Pace Gallery, where the are for sale standing works were exhibited this week .
“first move”
“In the last five years we’ve raised $500,000,” which was partially used for initial consolidation and painting work, adds Brent Leggs, director of a special African-American heritage program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. , who collaborates with artists .
But the 60 square meter house still needs funding to become a permanent site open for tours and cultural events.
To give a boost, the artists have brought together eleven works, including paintings by Cecily Brown and Sarah Sze, whose sales will fuel the project.
The auctions, organized by Pace and Sotheby’s, will take place online from May 12th to Monday. Brent Leggs is hoping to make $2 million from it, thanks in large part to a Saturday night gala in New York supported by tennis champion Venus Williams.
“It’s Nina Simone’s legacy that has allowed people like me to be visible,” says the first black player to become world number one in a video.
Black Lives Matter
Nina Simone, some of whose songs are on the playlists of the Black Lives Matter movement, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during segregation.
In Tryon’s three-bedroom house, where she spent her early years with her parents and siblings, little Eunice Waymon – her real name – became immersed in music, starting to play the piano at the age of three and excelling in teaching “Miss Mazzie”. an English teacher who passed on her passion for Johann Sebastian Bach.
But her dream of becoming a classical concert singer is shattered at the front door of the Philadelphia Conservatory, a failure she will spend her life blaming on racism.
His career in the 1960s combined fighting for African American civil rights, sometimes with radical speeches, sometimes in song, with “Mississippi Goddam,” the reaction of members of the Ku Klux Klan to the murderous burning of a church in Alabama (1963) or with the poignant “Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”, which she performs three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King (1968).
She eventually left the United States and spent her final years in southern France, where she died in 2003.
Brent Leggs says Tryon’s home could open to the public as early as 2024. “Our country is beginning to understand the need to preserve our entire history and to recognize and celebrate the diversity of our country,” he adds.
“It’s an exciting time for conservation,” he said.