A place to keep the memory of Nina Simone alive. In New York, artists auctioned off their works to turn the birthplace of the soul diva and civil rights activist into a cultural site, with the support of Venus Williams.
The house, a modest pillared house with entrance porch and wooden plank facades, is nestled on a hill in the small town of Tryon, in a rural county in North Carolina, in the southeastern United States.
It was on sale in 2017 when four artists, Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton, bought it for $95,000 so it wouldn't disappear.
After years of fighting for civil rights in the United States, Nina Simone finally left her country to settle in France where she died in 2003. (Bertrand Guay/AFP) AFP or licensors
"Nina Simone fought for an inclusive and diverse America," says Adam Pendleton. Allowing "people to see and visit" his birthplace, "is a way to keep his legacy, his music, alive for future generations," he adds, inside the Pace Gallery in New York, where the works for sale were on display this week.
Become a permanent host site for cultural events
"In the last five years, we've raised $500,000," used in part for early consolidation and painting, adds Brent Leggs, director of a specific program for African-American heritage at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which works with artists.
But the 60 m2 house still needs funding to become a permanent site, open to visits and cultural events.
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To give a helping hand, the artists have gathered eleven works, including paintings by Cecily Brown or Sarah Sze, whose sale will feed the project.
The auction, organized by Pace and Sotheby's, takes place on the Internet since May 12 and until Monday. Brent Leggs hopes to make $ 2 million, including thanks to a gala Saturday night in New York, supported by tennis champion Venus Williams.
"It's Nina Simone's legacy that has allowed people like me to be visible," said the first black player to become world number one in a video.
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Nina Simone, whose songs make up the playlists of the Black Lives Matter movement, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during racial segregation.
In the three-room house in Tryon, where she lived her early years with her parents and siblings, little Eunice Waymon, her real name, was immersed in music, began playing the piano at the age of three, and excelled under the lessons of "Miss Mazzie", an English teacher who passed on her passion for Johann Sebastian Bach.
But her dream of becoming a classical concert performer was shattered at the front door of the Philadelphia Conservatory, a failure she would attribute all her life to racism. His career married in the 1960s the struggle for civil rights of African-Americans, sometimes with a radical speech, sometimes in songs, with "Mississippi Goddam", response to the murderous burning of a church in Alabama by members of the Ku Klux Klan (1963), or with the poignant "Why? (The king of love is dead) ", which she performed three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King (1968).
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She eventually left the United States and lived her final years in southern France, where she died in 2003.
According to Brent Leggs, the Tryon home could be open to the public as early as 2024. "Our country is beginning to understand that we need to preserve our entire history, and recognize and celebrate the diversity of our country," he added. "An exciting time for historic protection," he said.