Baker Block Museum highlights legendary Louisiana artist
Hunter, who died at age 101 in 1988, is Louisiana’s most famous female artist and one of the most important folk artists of all time, according to the art display’s informational text.
The overall display was created and based on research by Mia Barrett, who sits on the North Okaloosa Historical Association Board of Directors. The nonprofit museum, which stands at 1307 Georgia Ave. in Baker, is operated under the board’s guidance.
“I’m a native of Louisiana, and I thought her story would be fitting for Black History Month,” Barrett said today about Hunter.
Hunter was born to sharecroppers, and her grandparents were slaves, Barrett said. According to Barrett’s research, Hunter was born into a Creole family of African, Irish and French descent on Hidden Hills Plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana.
The informational text for the art display tells visitors that Hunter began working beside her parents in the cotton fields as a young child and never learned to read or write.
“At age 15, she moved to Melrose Plantation where she lived and worked most of her life,” the text explains. “She was a self-taught black folk artist from the Cane River region who began painting in her late 50s after finding some discarded paints and brushes.
“Clementine painted on unconventional surfaces on found objects such as cardboard, bottles, gourds, wood, window shades, etc. She vividly depicted daily life on Melrose Plantation in her memory-based paintings. She often featured cotton pickings, baptisms, funerals, washing clothes, and lively social scenes like Saturday night dancing.”
In 1955, the Delgado Museum, now the New Orleans Museum of Art, held an exhibition for Hunter.
“It was the first for an African American artist in a Louisiana museum,” according to the informational text for the display at the Baker Block Museum. “Unjust segregation laws prevented her from entering her own exhibition as she had to be sneaked in through the back door after hours so she could see her work on display.”
Today, Hunter’s paintings sell for thousands of dollars. Her work can be seen in the Smithsonian Institute, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, The High Museum of Atlanta, the Dallas Museum of Find Arts, The New York Historical Association, The Oprah Winfrey Collection in Chicago, and numerous other museums, universities and private collections across the country and around the globe.
“I think it’s cool she’s featured in the Smithsonian,” Baker Block Museum Executive Director Ann Spann said.
The Baker Block Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and every third Saturday. Admission is free.
