With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Marian Anderson
Music
1897 – 1993
Internationally renown African American singer of arias, traditional American songs and spirituals who lived in Danbury for fifty years. The rehearsal studio built for her by her husband c.1943 is on the grounds of the Danbury Museum and Historical Society.
- Biography/Description of Work
Throughout Anderson’s forty year singing career, between 1925 and 1965, she performed in concerts and recitals throughout the United States and Europe, and made many recordings of her broad and diverse repertoire. She also assumed a prominent role in the fight against racial prejudice for artists. After being denied permission to sing by the DAR at Constitution Hall in Washington DC in 1939, President and Eleanor Roosevelt helped her arrange an open air performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of more than 75,000 people of all backgrounds; the concert also aired live on radio. She was the first black performer to take the stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1955, singing her only opera role. In 1963, Anderson sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom the same year. Anderson and her husband, architect Orpheus H. Fisher (1900-1986) moved to a property on Joe’s Hill Road in Danbury in 1943; they called it Marianna Farm and Anderson lived there until 1993.
- Sources view
- Rachel Carley, http://www.danburymuseum.org, Marian Anderson Benefit for Harlem Dancers - New York Times - 1978-3-25, Marian Anderson Concert at Lincoln Memorial - New York Times - 1939-4-10, Marian Anderson Honored at 75 by Carnegie Hall - New York Times - 1975-2-28 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Anderson
- Associated Resource(s)