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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 19, 2016
Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Press Contact: Rebecca Marsie, Communications Associate
860.443.2545 x112 / [email protected]

LYMAN ALLYN PRESENTS CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRAM WITH AWARD-WINNING AUTHORS

New London – The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is pleased to announce Children of Change! Kids and Civil Rights, a public program featuring two award-winning children’s authors who have written about young people in the Civil Rights movement. The event, which will be held July 23, 2016 from 1:00 – 4:00 pm, is supported by grants from Connecticut Humanities and the National Endowment of Humanities.

Authors Kekla Magoon and Elizabeth Partridge will look at how children shaped the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s ad ‘60’s. The program, which complements the Museum’s NEH On the Road exhibition For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (June 16 – August 11, 2016), will explore issues of social justice and identity then and now and the big impact that even the youngest members of society can have. Participants will learn how history served as inspiration for the authors’ creative work, both fiction and non-fiction; the historic role that children played in the Civil Rights movement; and will be encouraged to think about how modern issues of social justice affect their own lives in ways similar or dissimilar to those of the past.

Children and other audience members will be able to meet the authors—a particularly good opportunity at a time when dwindling school budgets make author visits and museum field trips more difficult. Meeting the authors and participating in the FREE creative writing workshop
will also encourage literacy among young attendees by generating excitement about the authors and their books.

The program schedule will include presentations and book signings by the authors, a Q&A between authors and audience, and a FREE creative writing workshop (ages 10 and up) on self –expression in adversity.

Museum members and New London residents are Free. There is a $5 admission fee for all others. Please RSVP to 860.443.2545 ext. 129.

Kekla Magoon discusses X: A Novel, which imagines the teenage years of Malcolm X, as well as a number of her other young adult novels and non-fiction books that focus on children caught up in issues of civil rights—both in the past and today. Kekla is a winner of an 2016 NAACP Image Award and two Coretta Scott King Honor Awards.

Elizabeth Partridge presents the story behind Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary, her award-winning non-fiction book for young readers about the children of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. Elizabeth is the winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Children of Change! Kids & Civil Rights has been made possible with a generous funding award of $3,250 from Connecticut Humanities, and $1,000 in support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Check the museum website at www.lymanallyn.org and our Facebook page for updates. On Twitter, follow the hashtag #childrenofchange

For more information or images, please contact Rebecca Marsie at 860.443.2545 x112 or at [email protected].

About Connecticut Humanities
Connecticut Humanities, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, supports cultural and historic organizations that tell the state’s stories, build community and enrich lives.
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About the National Endowment for the Humanities
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.
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About the Lyman Allyn Art Museum
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut and all over the world. Established in 1926 by a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neo-classical building surrounded by 11 acres of green space in 1932. Today it presents a number of changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 16,000 objects from ancient times to the present; artworks from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts and Victorian toys and doll houses.

The museum is located at 625 Williams Street, New London, Connecticut, exit 83 off I-95. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, Sundays 1:00 – 5:00 pm; closed Mondays and major holidays. For more information call 860.443.2545, ext. 129 or visit us on Facebook or the web at: www.lymanallyn.org.

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