Bethany Collins

Bethany Collins will perform America: A Hymnal as part of the group exhibition Visual Record: The Materiality of Sound in Print presented on Thursday, January 19, at 7pm, at 15 Rutherford Place in New York.

The institutions press release follows:

Presented by the Print Center New York, Collins’s new performance offers a chronological retelling of American history, politics, and culture through one song. Over time, “My Country ’Tis of Thee” (also known as “America”) has seen its title and lyrics re-written at least 100 times in support of passionately held causes—from temperance and suffrage to abolition and even the Confederacy. During this one-hour performance at the Fifteenth Street Monthly Meetinghouse of The Religious Society of Friends, singers from The Unsung Collective will sing a single version of the anthem, “War” from 1862, in a myriad of musical forms.