Art Properties is pleased to be among the lenders to the current exhibition 20 and Odd: The 400-Year Anniversary of 1619, now on view in the Leroy Neiman Gallery, Dodge Hall, on the Morningside campus until September 30, 2019. This exhibition commemorates the 400-year anniversary of the first documented arrival of Africans landing at the Jamestown settlement in 1619, and serves to explore this history through images, documents, archival materials and contemporary art, recounting the first documented Africans in the British colony.

Art work from the University art collection, based in Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, along with material from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress, have been brought together to help rethink the early history of the United States and to provide insight as to what life would have been like for Africans in the conflicted space of the New World. Works on view from Art Properties include: a 1967 oil painting by Charles Mwenze Mungolo, an artist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; prints by the African-American artist Hale Woodruff; and an enlarged facsimile of the image seen here, a carbon-print photograph of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, taken in the mid-1880s.

For more information about the exhibition and related programs, go to https://arts.columbia.edu/events/20-and-odd-400-year-anniversary-1619.