Visit This Exhibit
On display June 5, 2024 - September 1, 2024
Open Wednesday – Sunday
11 AM – 4 PM CST
Accessibility
This exhibit is located throughout the Museum, however most artwork can be found on the first floor and is wheelchair accessible. An album with images of the installations on the second floor is available for those who are mobility impaired.
A Juneteenth Rodeo
An Exhibition of Work by Sarah Bird
on display at the Neill-Cochran House mUseum
June, 5, 2024 - September 8, 2024
Artist statement
A Juneteenth Rodeo is a collection of photographs taken in the late 1970s in the jubilant, vibrant, vital, and now all-but vanished world of small-town Black rodeos. By the time you are reading these words, I will be 75. Three-quarters of a century. So dramatically much closer to the end than to the beginning. This exhibition, and the publication on which it is based, is the fulfillment of what I’ve thought of as a sacred duty that had to be accomplished before I reached that end: to return these photos and stories to the community they sprang from.
Though rooted in the enduring tragedy of enslavement, Black rodeos, particularly Juneteenth rodeos, were triumphant occasions that celebrated fellowship, community, and victories both in and out of the arena. While never denying the dark history and profound deprivation that underlay these events, it is their spirit of triumph, of joy, I most sought to capture and convey.
I will never know what it meant to be a Black cowboy in this or any era, but through these images and the accompanying narrative, I hope to explain why I was drawn to their world and what I discovered in those now all-but vanished, small-town rodeos.
The journey started a long time ago
selected images
About SARAh BIRD
Sarah Bird is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and journalist. She has published ten novels and two books of essays.
Bird’s last novel Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen was named an All-time Best Books about Texas by the Austin American-Statesman; Best Fiction of 2018. Christian Science Monitor; Favorite Books of 2018. Texas Observer. Chosen by six One City, One Book programs; and a Lit Lovers Book Club Favorites
Bird is a nine-time winner of Austin Best Fiction Writer award. She was recently honored with the University of New Mexico’s 2020 Paul Ré Award for Cultural Advocacy. In 2015 Bird was one of eight winners selected from 3,800 entries to attend the Meryl Streep Screenwriters’ Lab. Bird was chosen in 2017 to represent the Austin Public Library as the hologram/greeter installed in the Austin Downtown Library. Bird was a co-founder of The Writers League of Texas.
Bird was also a finalist for The Dublin International Literary Award; an ALEX award winner; Amazon Literature Best of the Year selection; a two-time winner of the TIL’s Best Novel award; a B&N’s Discover Great Writers selection; a New York Public Libraries Books to Remember; an honoree of theTexas Writers Hall of Fame; an Amazon Literature Best of the Year selection; a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; and an Austin Libraries Illumine Award for Excellence in Fiction winner. In 2014 she was named Texas Writer of the Year by the Texas Book Festival and presented with a pair of custom-made boots on the floor of the Texas Senate Chamber.
Bird has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller; a writer for Oprah’s Magazine, NY Times Sunday Magazine and Op Ed columns, Chicago Tribune, Real Simple, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Salon, Daily Beast, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, MS, Texas Observer; Alcalde and a columnist for six years for Texas Monthly.
