A special edition The Spirit of the Confederacy NFT by the visionary and entrepreneurial Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) becomes live July 25, 2022 via auction on Rarible and with an evening event at the museum.

This special edition The Spirit of the Confederacy NFT follows previous editions designed by Paris based artist and designer Rodhir Daile in the HMAAC collection, that includes the Rosa Parks, Cotton Wreath Flag, Mosiah Garvey, Nipsey Hussle and Mohammid Ali NFTs.

According to HMAAC CEO John Guess, Jr., “Historical narrative has always been driven by the few people with access to power holding ownership of the commemorative landscape. We feel this next step, allowing people of color to share through ownership of an NFT control over this commemorative symbol of hate, is an important one at this time of racial unrest and suppression.”

HMAAC received national attention in 2020 when it became the first African American cultural asset to own a Confederate monument. The action was controversial especially because, as one wrier put it, The Spirit is an unsettling, deeply offensive monument. The Spirit is proto-Aryanism, The symbolism is plain, the message clear: The cause of the Confederacy was just, and right, and Divinely approved. Erected 40 years after Appomattox, this is no memorial to Confederate dead, no focal point for a community's collective grieving for lost love ones, sacrificed on faraway battlefields. The Spirit of the Confederacy is a provocation, an act of defiance.

In anticipation of receipt of the monument, the Museum hosted a one day symposium in 2019, “Lest We Forget: A National Conversation with the Confederacy,” that included Bernard Kinsey, Los Angeles philanthropist, entrepreneur and co-founder of the renowned Kinsey Collection; Rice University professor James Sidbury, Prairie View A&M University professor Melanye Price, Texas Southern professor Carla Brailey, Sam Houston State professor Brian Matthew Jordan, Maryland Institute College of Art Dean Emeritus and member of the Baltimore Monuments Commission Leslie King Hammond and Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator Emerita at New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design and former Chair of New York’s Cultural Institutions Group. The results of that symposium are documented in the Museum publication, Houston Joins the National Confederate Monuments Discussion, that has been received by entities across the country, including The Mellon Foundation and LAXART, which next year will sponsor a national exhibition in Los Angeles that will include The Spirit.

Subsequently, HMAAC had two artists engage The Spirit. The Museum’s first statement was an important one, and HMAAC Fellow Willow Curry’s filmed dialogue, “This is What Hate Look Like,” which remains on the Museum’s website, was powerful. The Museum followed up thee Curry engagement of The Spirit through HMAAC Resident Artist John Sims live “Burn the Confederate Flag” ceremony in front of the monument.

Two years later, the first major review of the Museum’s controversial national action came in art historian Erin Thompson’s widely praised Smashing Statues: The Rise And Fall of America’s Public Monuments. Thompson wrote, “Standing in front of a legislature that ignores minority issues or a courthouse that disproportionately punishes people of color, monuments boast that white people control America. The Houston Museum of African American Culture disproves its monument’s core claim simply by owning and controlling it.”

For HMAAC CEO John Guess, Jr. “The time has come to broaden ownership and control of this symbol of hatred. As the only African American cultural asset to own a Confederate monument, how we broaden and reconstitute the narrative around it to take power from its symbolism is important.”

The special edition The Spirit of the Confederacy NFT will bee offered a follows:

Option 1: Live Auction | Price At Listing: $55,000.00 (ETH/Ethereum)

● We will release only 1 version of option 1. The opening bid will begin at $55,000.00 (ETH).

● We will list at 20% royalty from this version.

Listing on Rarible | HMAAC NFT Account

Option 2: Investable for members, private collectors, and the public.

● This version will include the animated version of “Spirit of The Confederacy”.

● Collectors will receive the digital piece and unlockable stake share document of the physical statue. Stake share is TBD

by HMAAC.

● The listing price for Option 2 will be at $1,100, 000.00.

20 editions will be released of Option 2.

Unlockable content will be a PDF document, which will entail stake shares in the physical statue.

● Listing on Rarible | HMAAC NFT Account

With thousands of followers on multiple social platforms, and recently named by The Houston Chronicle one of the Three Best Museums in Houston along with The Museum of Natural Science and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, HMAAC is one of the most dynamic and consistently community focused national brands that brings history and culture directly to its visitors and consumers.

About the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC)

The exhibits, message murals, films, performances, public art projects and community engagement events at the museum and inside neighborhoods of color emphasize the museum’s direct empowerment of neighborhoods. HMAAC has a singular goal: to create cultural capital in our neighborhoods that empowers individuals to feel more confident, to see the value and have more pride in the neighborhoods where they live, and in this way begin to break the generational cycle of poverty. It is in this context that the museum’s multicultural conversation on race devolves into the Afro-futuristic hope of a common future of equity and equality. Being the only African American museum in the country without dedicated public funds as a public good, HMAAC serves as an example of what vision and commitment can accomplish against significant odds. As a museum in a building and in the community, HMAAC stands as one of the most visionary and entrepreneurial cultural assets in the country.