HOLLAND, MI – A center devoted to African-American history and art in Holland has closed its doors. However, its founder is hopeful that the center can reopen its doors sometime next year in Grand Rapids. Volunteers were on hand Saturday, Sept. 20, to empty out the Center of African-American Art and History. The center’s board of directors recently voted to shut down the museum, to the surprise of Ruth Coleman, who founded the museum in January 2012. Coleman is now looking into the possibility of relocating the center in Grand Rapids in hopes of attracting a larger, regional audience. “We felt we would get more communal support if we located in a large city with a larger African-American population,” Coleman said Friday, September 19.
According to Coleman, she and the center’s board were at odds over a proposal to purchase the building where the museum was housed at 21 West 16th Street. She was in the process of a drive to raise $140,000 for buying the bank-owned building. “I wanted to purchase the building, so (the center) could have longevity,” Coleman said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t the board’s idea.” The building also included two apartments, and the board wasn’t interested in becoming a landlord for those apartments, Coleman said.
The museum featured U.S. African-American history and art. When it opened in 2012, it featured a room that replicated the study of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., with a speaker system that piped in King’s voice from one of his sermons.
The art showcase included a painting by Holland artist Sandra Hansen that depicted the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American who was murdered in 1955 in Missisippi after he whistled at a white woman. Hansen’s painting had been featured at the ArtPrize competition the previous year.
Past exhibits at the center had focused on such notable African-Americans as abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the prominent poet Langston Hughes.
Coleman and her husband, Wayne, who pastors the Imagine Fellowship church in Holland, have relocated to Grand Rapids. But she is thankful for the support she received while in Holland.
“We had a lot of great support in Holland. I want the community to know I appreciate all of their support,” Coleman said.
