Press Release

The George W. Bush Presidential Center to Host Traveling Exhibit of Works by Brian Washington, `The Continual Struggle: The American Freedom Movement and the Seeds of Social Change’

The 25-piece special exhibit is an epic body of work that provides a powerful and moving vision of America’s historic struggle for civil rights that continues today.

DALLAS — The George W. Bush Presidential Center announced today that it will host “The Continual Struggle: The American Freedom Movement and the Seeds of Social Change” by artist Brian Washington from Jan. 17 to March 27, 2022, in Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. The exhibit is made possible by the generous support of our presenting sponsor, The Boeing Company.

“The Continual Struggle: The American Freedom Movement and the Seeds of Social Change,” a collection that was 13 years in the making, documents all phases of the civil rights movement, a pivotal time in America’s ongoing fight to eliminate segregation and other forms of race-based disenfranchisement. The 25-piece exhibit uses visual art as a way of educating, storytelling, powerfully recalling an era of protests against injustice and inequality.

Brian Washington is a world-class artist whose work mostly reflects our Nation’s struggle for equality and racial reconciliation. He’s also an attorney, arts advocate, and intellectual. 

“With this exhibit, I hope to elicit the raw emotions from the atrocities African Americans struggled with in years past and bring them to the forefront in today’s cultural lessons,” Washington said. “I want people who see `The Continual Struggle: The American Freedom Movement and the Seeds of Social Change to come away with a renewed and educated sense of American history that demonstrates our country’s ability to change for the better.”

An earlier, 11-piece series on the same theme, titled “The Continual Struggle: The Civil Rights Movement – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” was acquired in 2003 by the Smithsonian Institution. Those pieces are now part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian-affiliated National Underground Railroad Center in Cincinnati. The exhibit at the Bush Center will be made up of subsequent works.

Admission to view “The Continual Struggle” is included with the purchase of a ticket to visit the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum’s permanent exhibit on the 43rd President of the United States, which includes steel from the World Trade Center and a full-scale replica of the Oval Office.

For more information, visit https://www.bushcenter.org/exhibits-and-events/exhibits/2022/the-continual-struggle.html