ニーナ・シモンの幼少期の家、修復費用に８億円集まる

【ニューヨークＡＦＰ＝時事】米国の伝説的歌手で公民権運動家のニーナ・シモンさんが幼少期を過ごした家の保存と修復に向けた資金調達のため、米ニューヨークで記念イベントと美術作品の競売が実施され、当初の目標金額２００万ドル（約２億７７００万円）を大幅に上回る５８８万ドル（約８億１５００万円）余りが集まった。主催者が２３日、発表した。（写真は仏パリでコンサートを行う米歌手ニーナ・シモンさん）
　修復されるのは、南部ノースカロライナ州で幼いシモンさんが両親やきょうだいと共に暮らした、部屋数が三つの家。
　イベントを主催したアフリカ系米国人文化遺産活動基金のブレント・レッグス代表は「今回の資金調達により、この家の全面改修と２０２４年からの一般公開に向け、順調に準備を進めている」とコメントした。
　競売はギャラリー「ペース」と競売会社サザビーズがオンラインで実施。米英のアーティストが寄付した作品が出品された。
　シモンさんは、人種分離政策があった１９３３年に生まれた。本名はユーニス・ウェイモン。３歳からピアノを始めた。
　しかしクラシック音楽を志したシモンさんの夢は、名門カーティス音楽院に入学を拒否されたことで打ち砕かれた。シモンさんは、その背景には人種差別があったとみていた。
　６０年代には、演説や歌を通じて公民権運動に積極的に参加した。代表曲は「ミシシッピ・ガッダム」や「ホワイ─キング牧師は死んでしまった（Ｗｈｙ？ － Ｔｈｅ ｋｉｎｇ ｏｆ ｌｏｖｅ ｉｓ ｄｅａｄ）」など。晩年は南仏で暮らし、２００３年に亡くなった。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】





〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/05/25-19:31）

An art auction and New York gala have raised nearly $6 million to preserve and restore the childhood home of soul music legend and civil rights activist Nina Simone, organizers said Tuesday.
The twin events brought in some $5.88 million -- far more than the original $2 million organizers hoped to raise to restore the rural North Carolina abode.
The new funding will meaningfully advance our project goals to complete the full restoration of the house and landscape, said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
With this investment, we are well on our way to opening the doors to visitors in 2024.
Four US artists -- Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton -- bought the dilapidated rural home in 2017 for $95,000. They've since worked with Leggs' organization, as well as tennis star Venus Williams, to raise money to turn the house into a cultural and historic site.
The online auction, with works donated by British painter Cecily Brown and American artist Sarah Sze, was organized by Pace and Sotheby's.
Among the 11 works for sale, Mehretu's ink-and-acrylic New Dawn, Sing (for Nina) fetched $1.6 million.
Simone, whose songs found renewed resonance during the Black Lives Matter protests of recent years, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during the era of racial segregation.
Born Eunice Waymon, she spent the first years of her life in the three-room house in Tryon, in the rural southeastern state of North Carolina, with her parents and siblings, and began playing the piano at age three.
But her dream of becoming a classical concert performer was shattered when she was rejected by Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, an ordeal she attributed to racism.
In the 1960s, Simone was active in the civil rights movement, including through rousing speeches and song.
Her Mississippi Goddam, was a response to a 1963 fire in an Alabama church started by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, she performed Why? (The king of love is dead).
Simone eventually left the United States and lived her last years in the south of France, where she died in 2003.