The portraits are as varied as the students who created them for a special Juneteenth art exhibit at the Evergreen Park Public Library. That variety and richness is one of the reasons Evergreen Park High School thought it was important to team up with the library to showcase the students’ Black heroes. The student body and surrounding community include a mixture of ethnicities.
“Because our area is so diverse, I think it’s extremely important that we incorporate that into our curriculum,” said Libby McArthur, the art teacher who led the 70 students in their creations, many traditional art but some digital. “What I am extremely proud of is as soon as I explained the assignment, the students jumped right into it.” McArthur, who is also co-chair of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for Art Educators in Illinois, said many of the students were as vested as she was in the project.
The Juneteenth Interactive Portrait Project Exhibit, which runs through June 30, features Black heroes, many well-known, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Chisholm, Barack and Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Bob Marley, Prince and Michael Jordan. Then there is the lessor known Henry Johnson, who was in the first African American Unit in the U.
S. Army and received a medal of honor for his service during World War I. Portraits of Steph Curry (by Savana Henry) and Henry Johnson (by Ryan Cihocki) are part of the Juneteenth exhibit at Evergreen Park Public Library.
(Janice Neumann/for the D.
