The official dedication for Spiral Odyssey, one of Charlotte’s newest pieces of public art, which is in Romare Bearden Park, will take place Saturday, September 23rd, 2017, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Following the dedication there will be free jazz performances at The Mint Museum Uptown, and free admission to The Mint Museum and Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture.
Here’s all the information, from the Arts and Science Council:
Two of the most influential African-American artists of the 20th century – one of whom is one of Charlotte’s favorite sons – and one of uptown’s newest public artworks will be celebrated on the same day.
The public dedication for “Spiral Odyssey,” the public artwork created by Chicago artist Richard Hunt and installed in May, takes place Sept. 23 at uptown Charlotte’s Romare Bearden Park, where the nearly 30-foot tall and 8,000-pound stainless steel sculpture is located.
Its title references the role of park namesake and Charlotte-born artist Romare Bearden in convening African-American artists in 1963 around arts activism during the Civil Rights Movement. It also alludes to Bearden’s series of works that took Homer’s epic poem as a point of inspiration and departure.
Hunt and Bearden share the distinction of being the first two African-American artists to have solo exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Hunt’s artwork is displayed in museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. and the National Museum of Israel in Jerusalem.
The dedication of “Spiral Odyssey” will take place from 10 to 11 a.m. It will be followed by free Jazzin’ on the Terrace performances one block away at Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts, where the museum will pay tribute to Hunt and Bearden with two jazz sets of finger-snapping, toe-tapping compositions performed by a local jazz ensemble at noon and 1:30 p.m.
Afterwards, venture inside Mint Museum Uptown to view the Romare Bearden Gallery, which is on view through Nov. 18, 2017, and hosts Bearden’s “Odysseus Series” that Hunt’s sculpture was named for. Admission will be free Saturday, Sept. 23 as part of the national Smithsonian Museum Day Live! celebration. (The Mint will offer free admission all day at both of its locations.)
To continue celebrating the artistic legacy of Romare Bearden, you are encouraged to visit the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, where two additional works by Bearden are on display as part of the museum exhibition “Instill & Inspire: Selections from the John & Vivian Hewitt Collection of African-American Art.” Admission to the Gantt Center will also be free Sept. 23 as part of Museum Day Live! The exhibition runs through Jan. 22, 2018.
Bearden’s “Before Dawn” is also on display at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Main Library in uptown Charlotte. The artwork is part of Mecklenburg County’s public art collection.
Charlotte on the Cheap is a member of 
