Speaking of Revolution Continues Across New York
By Joseph Murphy, Director of Strategic Partnerships
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Humanities New York is convening a statewide series of Community Conversations that asks a deceptively simple question: what does “revolution” mean now?
Through local histories, works of art, music, and shared traditions, Speaking of Revolution explores the many ways people experience change. In some places, the conversation turns to moments of disruption. In others, participants look at what communities carry forward and what they choose to remake.
Part of the nationwide By the People: Conversations Beyond 250 initiative, the series is developed in partnership with organizations that serve very different regions and communities in New York State. Each conversation is shaped by the community hosting it and is grounded in the histories, questions, and experiences that make that place distinct.
The sites could hardly be more different: an Indigenous cultural center near Syracuse, a former sailors' home on Staten Island, an art museum in Corning, a textile studio in Buffalo.
The series began this spring at the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center on Onondaga Nation territory with a discussion of the Deer Hide Agreement and its continuing relevance. Upcoming conversations will explore jazz at Staten Island's Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Indigenous perspectives at The Rockwell Museum in Corning, and how shared practices can help communities carry memory and build connection through a partnership with Stitch Buffalo.
On June 17, the series continues at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden on Staten Island. Developed with Universal Temple of the Arts, In a Different Key explores jazz as a form of cultural expression shaped by movement, adaptation, and exchange. The evening will open with music from Staten Island artist Darrell Smith before participants turn to a conversation about how communities carry traditions forward while making something new from them.
The following evening, June 18, Humanities New York joins The Rockwell Museum in Corning for Speaking of Revolution from Indigenous Perspectives. Working with Seneca Nation culture bearer Hayden Haynes, participants will examine Harm by Cannupa Hanska Luger alongside Albert Bierstadt's Mount Whitney. The conversation asks how works of art shape historical memory and what becomes visible when familiar stories are viewed from another perspective.
The series concludes in Buffalo on June 25 through a partnership with Stitch Buffalo. Founded to support refugee and immigrant women through textile arts, Stitch Buffalo brings together makers, artists, and community members from many backgrounds. Buffalo community leader Ekua Mends-Aidoo will help shape the conversation, whose setting points toward questions about making, memory, and how communities build connection and renewal.
Anniversaries encourage people to look backward. Speaking of Revolution is equally interested in what communities do with the past once they have inherited it.
