AND WE WENT: 60 YEARS AFTER THE BATON ROUGE SWIM-IN

Curated by Jonell Logan

July 5 - 27, 2023

open to the public, free of charge (Tue-Sun, 12-6pm)

In July 2023, Baton Rouge Gallery was proud to, in partnership with Dialogue on Race Louisiana and BREC, host a major exhibition to mark the 60th anniversary of the Baton Rouge Swim-In, essentially held in the very space where the pivotal but under-recognized demonstration took place.

Taking its title directly from the words of Rev. Betty Claiborne (one of five arrested following the 1963 effort to integrate the former City Park Pool), And We Went: 60 Years After the Baton Rouge Swim-In honored the bravery of the individuals involved and sparked honest conversation around the progress made (and not made) in the six decades since.

***City Park Pool, fenced off after its closure in the 1960s***

Open to the public (free of charge) throughout the month of July at Baton Rouge Gallery - center for contemporary art, And We Went was curated by Jonell Logan, Vice President and Creative Director of McColl Center in Charlotte, NC. It featured roughly a dozen artists from Louisiana and across the nation that spoke to issues of inequity, recreation, activism, and more. In addition to the paintings, textiles, prints, and mixed media works featured in the exhibition, visitors also encountered historically relevant images of the City Park Pool, Brooks Pool (which was created as a direct response to the segregationist policies of the times), and others.

And We Went included original works from: John Alleyne (New Orleans, LA), Kimberly Becoat (Brooklyn, NY), Aliyah Bonnette (Raleigh, NC), Justin Tyler Bryant (Little Rock, AR), Malaika Favorite (Geismar, LA), Roni Nicole Henderson (Columbia, SC), Randell Henry (Baton Rouge, LA), Juan Logan (Belmont, NC), John Isiah Walton (New Orleans, LA), Charles Edward Williams (Durham, NC), and Andrew Wilson (Oakland, CA).

This exhibition received the 2024 Southeastern Museums Conference Gold Award (First Place) in the “Over $25,000” budget category.

The Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) Exhibition Competition annually showcases the best in the profession and provides benchmarks for regional exhibition efforts in southeastern museums and, in 2024, received a record-breaking number of applications from a wide variety of museums across the southeast.