Dear Trinity Church and friends,
I’d like to share a “Come and See” exhibit update. As you may remember, following the murder of George Floyd and so many other people of color in 2020, Trinity continued its work to interrogate its history and understand its connection to, benefits from, and complicity with slavery and the slave trade. The exhibit, parcel to the parish’s ongoing work of repair, comprised two parts in the tunnel between the parish house and church. Along one wall were images of saints, martyrs, and heroes of color that we accepted with much gratitude from private collections. Across from these images were six, large panels that presented a narrative of Trinity’s past connections to slavery and their ties to our present building constructed after the Civil War. Gracing our walls for four years, the exhibit has been removed, but it has not been erased. A partner institution in the city asked to borrow the exhibit. With that loan now concluded, the Come and See exhibit has been digitized. With the launch of our new website, we are now working on appropriate online presentation and access. Stay tuned!
Best,
Cynthia Staples
Historian
Hello, Trinity Church and friends.
The architectural term for connecting structures like the tunnel that connects the parish house and church is “hyphen,” which is, not surprisingly, borrowed from the word for the connecting punctuation mark.
Prior to the renovations of the early 2000s, the tunnel connected somewhat usable spaces under the parish house to barely usable and downright dangerous spaces under the church. Once the floors were lowered and the walls were finished, foot traffic increased dramatically. The tunnel proved to be a good space to share exhibits from our archives, connecting passersby with our history.
This summer, Cynthia and I will partner with the soon-to-be-formed 150th Anniversary Committee to create exhibits to share simultaneously in the tunnel, narthex, social media channels, and website, so that you can enjoy them no matter which physical or virtual connections you use. Until then, the tunnel will host exhibits of physical archives, as we pilot sharing the same content more widely through digital means.
Thanks!
Sandy Marxen
Manager of Archives and IT