Duran views the NCHM Dining Room window where one of the three panels will be installed. In the 19th century this window looked out into the back yard, but with the construction of the addition this visual connection was lost.
Fidencio Duran at work in his home studio.
This panel, still in progress, will be viewed from the NCHM Dining Room window.
Give Us This Day is an interior mural project by Fidencio Duran designed to reconnect the main house and the areas that surrounded it during the second half of the nineteenth century. Too often when one visits a site with ties to enslavement and to free labor visitors learn about the family who lived inside the house while touring that space and then about those who labored on the property while outside. It is our goal to show that the lives of all who occupied our site were intertwined.
A series of three murals will present enslaved and free laborers’ daily tasks in gardening, construction, animal care, laundry, medical care, and craftsmanship. They will be placed in two windows - dining room and bark parlor - as well as the original dining room exterior doorway, through which visitors will see a woman exiting the space from serving at the table.
When the site was first developed, the view from the west-side windows and doorways arced down toward the Shoal Creek watershed to the west, an area now known as Pease Park. Smoke curling towards the sky on the horizon line will evoke the importance of that watershed to indigenous people traveling through Central Texas over thousands of years, including during the early Austin period.
Give Us This Day will be installed in the Neill-Cochran House Museum in early 2025.
Artist Statement
Give Us This Day
It is my honor and privilege to present my artwork in this effort to recognize the contributions of enslaved workers at Neill-Cochran House from the days of the early Texas Republic to the end of the Civil War. Their labor as domestic servants and builders skilled in the arts of cooking, soapmaking, butchery, animal care, farming, carpentry, masonry, and blacksmithing was indispensable as one third of Austin’s population in the establishment of Austin as capital of Texas and the establishment of American culture in this region. Their awareness, caring, and service can inform our present and inspire us to value humanity well in the future.
Fidencio Duran