Online panel discussion: Hidden Blackness

March 26, 2025 at 7:30pm ADT. This is a free event and open to the public. ASL and live automatic captions will be available. Registration is required.

Join panellists Mary McCarthy Brandt, Thandiwe McCarthy, Aleya Michaud, Havey Amani Whitfield, and David Woods for a riveting conversation about the long history of Black communities in the Maritime Provinces. This panel discussion is organized in conjunction with Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901), the first major exhibition of the artist’s work ever presented in Canada. Born in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, Bannister was a self-taught, nineteenth-century, African American/Canadian painter. In 1876, his painting Under the Oaks (now lost) won the bronze medal (first place) at the Centennial Exposition Art Exhibition in Philadelphia, thus making him the first artist of African descent and the first Canadian to win a major art prize in North America.

Aleya Michaud is a Black Acadian artist from Grand Falls, New Brunswick, now based in Riverview. A self-taught artist, she is driven by an intuitive and exploratory approach to painting and drawing, embracing play as both a creative process and a way of engaging with the world. She serves as Assistant Director of Galerie Sans Nom and is a member of the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance. She was recently an Artist in Residence at the Dieppe Arts and Culture Centre.

Dr. Mary McCarthy Brandt is a distinguished scholar with a PhD in Social Justice from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. In 2015, she set a legal precedent with her landmark human rights case against Shoppers Drug Mart, which successfully challenged racial profiling. She is a proud sixth-generation African descendent in New Brunswick, whose great-great-great-great-great grandmother arrived in 1783 after fleeing a plantation in Virginia, USA.

Thandiwe McCarthy is a seventh-generation, African Canadian spoken word poet, writer, and public speaker. As the culture correspondent for Maritime EDIT magazine, he highlights Black community leaders and artists. He was a co-founder of the New Brunswick Black Artists Alliance and he has played a key role in helping to recognize August 1st as Emancipation Day in New Brunswick.

Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield is the Centennial Carnegie Chair in the History of Slavery in Canada at the University of King’s College (Halifax, NS). His area of research interest is Black migration—coerced and free—to the Maritimes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is the author of several books including Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–60; Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents; and The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777–1810.

Dr. David Woods is a largely self-taught, multidisciplinary artist and arts organization leader from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He was the organizer of the province’s first Black History Month (1984) and the founder of several arts and cultural organizations, including the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia (1992). He has curated pioneering exhibitions of African Nova Scotian art, such as In This Place (1998), The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts (2012-2024), and Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901).

Hidden Blackness: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901) was made possible thanks to generous funding from the Government of Canada and Mount Allison University.  PACART is the exclusive transportation provider of the exhibition. For more information about the exhibition click here.

We would like to acknowledge that the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, is located within the traditional territory of Mi’kma’ki, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Mi’kmaq. Our relationship and our privilege to live on this territory was agreed upon in the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1725 to 1752. Because of this treaty relationship, it is to be acknowledged that we are all Treaty People and have a responsibility to respect this territory.