Ann Johnson: Still Here

October 17th, 2025 - February 2026
Opening Party: Friday, October 17th, 6pm-9pm
ON VIEW: Tuesdays-Thursdays, 3pm-6pm
Fridays, 12pm-7pm
Saturdays, 11am-4pm

Still here.  Surrounded by expensive condos and eateries Freedmen’s town is still here.  Generations of families, still here. The bricks, still here. The ReEducation of Freedmen’s town honors history and celebrates the community. In a city where the state of Texas closed twenty-seven school libraries transforming them into detention centers it is important that the legacy of Freedmen’s Town, the first black settlement post emancipation in Texas, is not erased.  

In 2023 Ann Johnson was a CAMLAB fellow with the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston.  Johnson developed a series and body of work titled the ReEducation of Freedmen’s Town. For the project Johnson reimagined archival photographs. Johnson included members of the Freedmen’s Town community to reenact the photos, which adds a contemporary twist, and unifies the past with the present. Invoking the spirit of Rutherford Yates, a noted printmaker in Houston, Johnson has printed the images on concrete.  Printing on concrete honors the brick pave ways that are the heartbeat of Freedmen's Town. 

The current political climate is having repercussions directly into the classroom as culture is erased and being wiped away.  Her method of unconventional printmaking and installation allows her and the viewer to delve into these subjects. In an unorthodox artistic manner Johnson examines ancestry, gentrification and community.

FLATS programming is sponsored by Fresh Arts and is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance