The Mariposa Museum in Oak Bluffs explores American history and experience through the creativity of (primarily) artists, storytellers, and scholars of color.

Opening May 28, 2021, our featured exhibit is Clarion Call, spotlighting two very different artists, Danny Simmons and Imo Nse Imeh, whose extraordinary response, through art, to the racial landscape provides new portals for experience past and present. In other exhibits, Ashley Bryan's Puppets appear courtesy of the Ashley Bryan Center (scroll down). And found object assemblage sculptor and civil rights artist Kevin Blythe Sampson shows work and invites artists of all ages to Make Something Beautiful!

Ashley Bryan doesn’t speak his stories, he sings them, fingers snapping, feet tapping, his voice articulating. His entire body is immersed in the tale. Born in 1923, Ashley was raised in the Bronx, NY. At 17, he entered the tuition-free Cooper Union School of Art and Engineering, having been denied entry elsewhere because of his race. Drafted out of art school into the segregated US army at age 19, Ashley preserved his humanity throughout World War II by drawing, stowing supplies in his gas mask when necessary. Learn More

Kevin Blythe Sampson is proud of his father, Stephen Sampson, a civil rights leader for 50 years in the Elizabeth, NJ area. As a result, Kevin grew up in a civil rights household, where much of NJ’s 1960s civil rights activism was planned by leaders like Dick Gregory, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Robert Ferris Thompson, and William Kunsler. Congress Woman Shirley Chisholm, one of Kevins father’s mentors, was a frequent dinner guest. Learn more