The newest addition to the National Register of Historic Places is the Kosciusko, Mississippi, home of LV Hull, a self-taught African-American artist who transformed her home into a living art environment.
This is the first home studio of an African American visual artist on the registry and the first private art environment created by an African American of either gender.
“Women, and particularly women of color, are woefully underrepresented in all types of designations designed to recognize places of historical and cultural significance,” Christina Morris, executive director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Where Women Made History initiative, said in a statement. “The inclusion of Hull’s house on the list signals a critical shift in the way we understand the achievements of women artists and Black women at the local, state and national levels.”
The appointment came on the 50th anniversary of Hull’s purchase of the property on August 12, 1974, for just $7,000.
“It’s in a black neighborhood with houses that weren’t valued particularly highly, but (Hull) ended up creating this beacon to the world and attracting people from all over. She said, ‘What’s happening here is valuable,'” Hull’s friend Yaphet Smith told the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
She began transforming the house into a work of art in 1975, using found materials such as old Easter baskets, hubcaps and discarded shoes to build assemblages in the garden. Hull’s designs, which she painted with her distinctive dots, eventually attracted visitors from all over the world.
“When I started decorating the yard, I wanted to do something nobody else would do. … I would wait until people were asleep and get the tires out from behind their houses. I didn’t want anyone to see me because I didn’t want to hear what they would say about me. People would say something like, ‘The old LV is crazy,'” Hull told William Arnett, founder of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the work of black Southern artists, in 1997. “The idea of painting was always in my head, waiting for its time to come.”
Hull’s home has been unoccupied since the self-proclaimed “unusual” artist’s death 16 years ago. Smith purchased the house in 2021 in hopes of saving the unique property, by which time it had fallen into disrepair due to weather and vandalism.
In 2023, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Hull’s house one of the eleven most endangered historic places in the United States. Many other notable art environments by self-taught black artists, such as Nellie Mae Rowe’s Playhouse in Atlanta, have disappeared and are known only through photographs.
But Smith is determined not to let that happen to Hull’s incredible creation. His nonprofit Keysmith Foundation is raising $400,000 to stabilize, restore and modernize the house. The plan is to open the LV Hull Legacy Center in 2025. The work will be done by Belinda Stewart Architects, with a $315,000 grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Building Fund for the Arts.
Her efforts to preserve the artwork will likely be stepped up again next year, when the Mississippi Museum of Art hosts a solo exhibition of Hull’s work. Smith is also working on an hour-long documentary about the artist, titled Love is a sensation.
The Kohler Foundation conserved the remainder of Hull’s artwork, a collection of approximately 850 works, in 2022. The artworks, none of which are currently installed in Hull’s home, belong to the Arts Foundation of Kosciusko.
“It is important to have an accurate history of creativity in America, and listing her house on the National Register helps achieve that goal,” Smith told the Art Newspaper“Hopefully it will be a catalyst for preserving the spaces and stories of other African-American artists, especially women.”
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