PEORIA The Peoria Riverfront Museum is reopening Saturday with a series of homegrown exhibits of international caliber.
The museum will be showcasing its own collection, which includes works by world-renowned artists. It will also be opening the doors on a new permanent exhibit by Peoria’s own famous artist, Preston Jackson, and there will be never-before-seen photographs from the early career of another famous Peorian, comedian Richard Pryor.
The pandemic has brought a lot of uncertainty to museums everywhere. When the Peoria Riverfront Museum was closed by order of the governor on Nov. 18 for the second time in 2020, no one knew when it would be able to reopen. It didn’t make fiscal sense to bring in exhibits people might never get to see, said John Morris, president and CEO of the museum.
Dalton Kemper/1470-100.3 WMBD
PEORIA, Ill. After being shut down in November due to COVID-19 mitigations, the Peoria Riverfront Museum will reopen Saturday, March 6.
When visitors return to the museum, there will be new exhibitions for them to view.
The main new exhibit is Preston Jackson’s “Bronzeville to Harlem: An American Story.”
Jackson, an acclaimed Peoria-based artist, redesigned “Bronzeville to Harlem” to be a semi-permanent installation in the museum’s renovated Owens Gallery, formerly The Street Gallery.
Jackson is gifting the work to the museum, and museum president and CEO John Morris expressed his gratitude to Jackson.
“At the perfect moment in our society’s history, this act of extraordinary generosity by the artist, his family, and his many supporters represents the largest, most valuable, and important story-telling art installation ever given for the public inspiration in the history of Peoria,” said Morris.