Newly acquired art works by local & regional BIPOC artists

In 2021, Forbes Library received a $10,000 anonymous donation with the express intent of supporting the library in its desire to diversify its permanent art collection. The Trustees of Forbes Library then matched the gift and appointed a committee to identify potential artists and recommend works of art to acquire for the permanent collection. Committee members reached out to the arts community in western Massachusetts, interviewed experts, viewed a wide range of images, and identified pieces to purchase.

Table of Contents

• About the Artists
• Walking Tour
• Acknowledgements

About the Artists

Jose Adastra

Jose Adastra is a parent, artist and activist currently living in Holyoke. He cares deeply about addressing inequalities and the health and safety of all members of our community. He served on the library’s BIPOC Art Selection Committee and co-chaired the library’s Racial and Social Justice Advisory Group.

Alex Callender

Alex Callender’s studio practice incorporates painting, drawing, and installation to explore intersections between myth, colonial legacies, and material culture. Through the visual forms of historical narrative, repurposed archival imagery, and speculative fictions, she considers questions of race and borders, environmental instability, and hybridized landscapes. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has had Fellowships at MacDowell, the Schomburg Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, Alice Yard (Trinidad), BAU Institute (France) and others. Her work is held in the Art in Embassies Collections and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Maine. Raised in New York City, Callender now lives in western Massachusetts and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Smith College.

Mike Curato

Mike Curato is the author and illustrator of everyone’s favorite polka-dotted elephant, Little Elliot and lives in Northampton. His debut title, Little Elliot, Big City, released in 2014 to critical acclaim, has won several awards, and has been translated into over ten languages. There are now five books in the Little Elliot series. Meanwhile, he had the pleasure of illustrating a number of children’s and teen books by other authors. In the same year he won the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show Founder’s Award. His debut young adult graphic novel, Flamer, was awarded a 2021 Golden Kite Award Honor for Illustrated Book for Older Readers by The Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators.

Priya N. Green

Priya N. Green received an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has shown her work internationally at spaces including the Jersey City Museum, UMass Amherst University Museum of Contemporary Art, Zimmerli Art Museum, the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and Cuchifritos Gallery. She is a recipient of the international Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant as well as a fellowship from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Green lives and works in Springfield, MA.

Ekua Holmes

Ekua Holmes is from Roxbury, MA, and a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work is collage based, made from cut and torn papers, and her subjects investigate family histories, relationship dynamics, childhood impressions, the power of hope, faith, and self-determination. For her work in illustrating children’s literature, Holmes is the recipient of a Caldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King’s John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award, Robert Siebert Award, and the Horn Book award, and is a two-time recipient of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.

Julius Lester

Julius Lester was a longtime Forbes patron who spent a lot of time at the library during his retirement. He taught for 32 years as a professor of African-American and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts. Lester began photographing for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1961, documenting the American South. In later years he used digital photography and editing tools to develop his images in new directions. He was also a civil rights activist, a folk musician, and the author of nearly four dozen books for children and adults, plus hundreds of essays and reviews. His photographs have been exhibited at Forbes Library (2006), Robert Floyd Gallery, and the Smithsonian, among others.

Grace Lin

Grace Lin is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle grade novels. Her novels Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Dumpling Days both received Newbery Honors, and her early reader Ling and Ting received the Theodor Geisel Honor. The cover illustration for her novel When the Sea Turned Silver was displayed at the White House, where Lin was recognized as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling. Many of her books are about the Asian-American experience because she believes, “Books erase bias, they make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal.”

Anthony Melting Tallow

Anthony Melting Tallow is a member of the Blackfoot nation and proud Two Spirit, Aya’kii’kas’si, (Walks A Journey Between). Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he faced discrimination, extreme neglect, abuse, and homelessness. His work addresses land dispossession, residential school intergenerational trauma, reframing indigenous voices, misappropriation of native imagery, and violence against indigenous women. Most importantly, Melting Tallow’s work represents hope. He now lives in Western MA.

Ryan Murray

Ryan Murray is a graduate of Northampton High School and received his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 2014. He is currently located in Springfield, MA, where he does freelance graphic design and paints over used vinyl records. Artist’s Statement “Through the unflinching medium of spray paint stenciling, I unearth and examine unsettling but important conversations about the stigma of mental illness, with the goal of normalizing the discussion and treatment of mental health in Black communities.”

Richard Yarde

Richard Yarde was born in Boston and lived much of his life in Northampton, where he was a frequent patron of Forbes Library. He taught art at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst from 1990 to 2011. One of America’s great watercolorists, Yarde is best known for his vibrant and monumental watercolors of Black historical and popular figures. Departing from the traditions of the medium, he worked on a bold scale and created his own unique style that drew equally from modernist aesthetics and the jazz culture and politics of the Harlem Renaissance. His paintings are in major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Baltimore Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; and Worcester Art Museum.

Walking Tour

Main Floor

2nd Floor

Basement

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

• BIPOC Art Committee•
• Friends of Forbes
• Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee
• The Yarde family
• Wendy Sinton
• Big Red Frame
• Robert Floyd Gallery
• Michelson’s Gallery
• anonymous donor