Through an intersection of personal lineage and collective history, two exhibitions open today, June 12, at Fort Works Art in Fort Worth: Declarations of Freedom, a group exhibition curated by the National Juneteenth Museum (NJM), and Inheritance, a solo show by gourd artist Michele Tejuola. Together, the exhibitions offer a layered portrait of Black identity, memory, and freedom, just ahead of the nation’s Juneteenth commemorations.
Presented in collaboration with Gallery of Dreams, Declarations of Freedom marks the NJM’s first-ever public showcase, a significant prelude to the museum’s anticipated 2026 opening. Curated by Dr. Lauren Cross and Christopher Blay, the show gathers work by more than a dozen artists from across the country, including Sedrick Huckaby, Letitia Huckaby, ann ‘sole sister’ johnson, Delita Martin, and Phillip Pyle II. Their pieces echo the multidimensional nature of liberation as reclamation, as community-building, and as a revisitation of suppressed histories.
“Some of the most important art being made today shares relevance and timelessness,” says Blay. “Declarations of Freedom brings together artists whose works reflect this vision.” That vision, in Blay’s words, is not just about aesthetic impact. These works carry the weight of the lived experience and generational memory, speaking to the past without being confined by it. Many artists in the exhibition engage directly with historical material, not to restage it, but to metabolize it, transforming archival residue into new forms of cultural presence.
These declarations are material. Through printmaking, photography, painting, and mixed media, artists in the exhibition “oscillate between a retelling of history, a preservation of culture, and an acknowledgement of self,” as Cross describes. The result is a chorus of visual testimonies: art as both witness and invocation. For Letitia Huckaby, that means returning to Africatown, Alabama, a historic community founded by survivors of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to reach the U.S. “Water adapts… it gives life, and it heals,” she writes. “That was my experience in Africatown.”
Upstairs, Michele Tejuola’s Inheritance unfurls a quieter, more intimate dialogue with heritage. Her hand-carved and painted gourds, many spanning decades, serve as heirlooms of memory and resistance. With motifs that range from motherhood to migration, Tejuola’s forms challenge traditional notions of craft, expanding gourd work into a fine art idiom steeped in Black Southern storytelling.
“Juneteenth wasn’t in my vocabulary until the early 1990s,” Tejuola says. “As I continued carving these stories over the years, it kept expanding my vision of what I could do with a gourd as my canvas.” Her latest works include a tribute to activist Opal Lee, known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth,” whose lifelong advocacy led to the holiday’s federal recognition.
For Lauren Saba, gallery director and founder of Gallery of Dreams, showing Tejuola’s work alongside Declarations of Freedom is both symbolic and deeply personal. “This moment is a rare alignment of history, heritage, and art,” says Saba. “It’s a love letter to Fort Worth.”
Rich in history, Fort Worth is actively shaping the evolving cultural memory. By anchoring these exhibitions in the days leading to Juneteenth, Fort Works Art transforms itself into a site of remembrance and vision.