SUPPORTING THE ARTS
Charlottesville Players Guild
Season tickets available for 2024-25
JSAAHC’s Charlottesville Players Guild is on a mission to make sure every Black artist knows what it is like to create within a completely Black space.
About Our Center
Located in the Jefferson School City Center, The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center’s mission is to honor and preserve the rich heritage and legacy of the African-American community of Charlottesville-Albemarle, Virginia and to promote a greater appreciation for, and understanding of, the contributions of African Americans and peoples of the Diaspora locally, nationally and globally.
The Center features a permanent historical exhibit, a rotating contemporary art gallery, and a robust calendar of events, all of which combine to highlight Charlottesville’s African American history and culture of the African diaspora.
Swords Into Plowshares is entering into its second community engagement phase. In this phase we are asking Charlottesville to help determine where a work of public art could be located in our community. We hope that you will participate by completing a short survey about your park usage. It only takes 3 minutes to complete.
Our goal in the next year is to focus on our area’s parks as cultural landscapes. Through research, guided tours, and community conversations we will continue to educate ourselves about the role public art can play in shifting centers and changing minds.
Swords Into Plowshares is a project of our Center For Local Knowledge which hopes to use research to further social justice.
We are hiring! We are looking for a researcher to get us to our next milestone. Click here for job description. All applications should be sent to localhistory@jeffschoolheritagecenter.org
Help us plan for the future by taking our survey.
Help share authentic history by becoming a guide.
The Heritage Center will be closed Saturday, March 30. We will reopen on Tuesday, April 2.
It’s Friday 3:34 am EST — Sorry, we’re closed. Visit us when we’re open!
Contemporary Gallery
Nic(o) Brierre Azziz: Haiti Across the Water
1 June – 31 August, 2024
Nic(o) Brierre Aziz is a Haitian-New Orleanian interdisciplinary artist and curator born and raised in New Orleans, LA. His current practice is deeply community focused and rooted around the utilization of underdiscussed personal and collective histories to reimagine the future. His work is also very centered around the Caribbean Diaspora and he is interested in Blackness as an experience, construct and capitalist tool.
The exhibition features works produced in the last five years that critically consider such this as history, migration, white supremacy and the lives of Black males. About his practice Azziz asserts that he “seeks to create work from the dark matter that uplifts and heals, while exposing truths the enable us all to tread down a more collectively harmonious path of liberation.”
Azziz is the recipient of several artist residencies and fellowships and mot recently, was selected as a 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fello and a 2021 Joan Mitchell Center Artis-in-Residence.
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of a private collection and the JSAAHC Annual Fund.
Alice Ivory: Sculpting in Metal
14 September – 14 December, 2024
Become a Member
Join today and be part of our vision for 2023 and beyond!
As a JSAAHC Member you’ll receive:
- Free admission to exhibits and events.
- Discounts on workshops, lectures, and programs.
- Invitations to members-only events.
- Discounts in Alumni Room Museum Shop and Café
- And much more.
Spotlight Events & Programs
EDUCATING THE COMMUNITY
Community Guides
New class begins Saturday, September 16, 2023 and continues each Saturday until October 28!
Public history is fun! We invite you to help us make Charlottesville our open air classroom. Learn local history and African American art history on Saturdays from 9am to 12pm. Apply to become a community guide today.
HONORING OUR HISTORY
Center for Local Knowledge
By appointment Tuesday through Saturday & every third Saturday 10am–12pm
The Center for Local Knowledge promotes the study of Charlottesville and Albemarle County local histories and fosters a deeper understanding of our community’s lived environment.
PRESERVING OUR LEGACY
Exhibition Showcase
Gallery available Tuesday through Friday 1pm–6pm and Saturdays 10am–1pm
Guided tours of our permanent and contemporary exhibitions are available for groups of 10–30 adults. Book your tour or view tour dates and time availability on our calendar.
Covid Policy: Due to limited space in exhibition galleries and our desire to keep us all safe, visitors must now obtain a general admission ticket to visit. Groups are limited to no more than eight people. Groups must obtain a timed group ticket.
Hours
Daily 1.00 pm–6.00 pm
Location
233 4th St NW, Charlottesville, VA 22903
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Upcoming Events
Concerts, Culture & Heritage, Special Event
JUNETEENTH Celebration 2024
Time: Saturday, June 15, 202410:00 AM - 3:00 PM /
JSAAHC once again will be parading for Juneteenth!! We have partnered with the Black Business Expo to bring you all the best Black businesses on the Yard and we have a tremendous line up of musicians for the Emancipation Concert, with more to come. Ike Anderson will be our MC for the day during the […]
Performance
Juneteenth Presentation: 5th & Dice by William A. James, Sr.
Time: Friday, June 14, 20247:30 PM - 9:30 PM /
Travel back to the 80’s on a corner most of us in Charlottesville know well. Playwright William A. James, Sr. takes us on a journey full of real life circumstances playing out on the corner of 5th and Dice. There will be a post show discussion with the director, cast and writer. All proceeds from […]
Exhibition opening, Gallery Talk, Special Event
Opening Haiti Across the Water
Time: Saturday, June 1, 2024June 1, 2024 - 6:00 PM - May 13, 2024 - 8:00 PM /
Exhibition opening for Haiti Across the Water. At 7pm artist Nic[o] Brierre Aziz will be in conversation with Marlene Daut, Professor of French & African Diaspora Studies, Yale University. Hors d’oeuvres by Pearl Island Catering, cash bar. The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of a private donor and the JSAAHC Annual Fund.
Lectures, Special Event
Tim Spofford Book Talk
Time: Friday, May 17, 20247:00 PM - 8:00 PM /
In 1940, Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark used a grant to study Black pupils’ dawning sense of racial identity in the nominally integrated North – Springfield, Massachusetts – and in the strictly segregated South, Mamie’s hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. A dramatic episode in Black history is told in vivid detail for the first […]
Hours
Heritage Center
Tuesday – Friday 1.00 pm – 6.00 pm
Saturday 10 am – 1 pm
Closed Monday & Sunday
Jefferson Heritage African American Center © 2020. All Rights Reserved