Valerie Maynard Ancestral Gate

Valerie Jean Maynard (August 22, 1937 – September 19, 2022) was an American sculptor, printmaker, designer, and educator whose work centered Black identity, social justice, and the lived experience of the African diaspora. For Hammonds House Museum, she designed the Ancestoral Gate in 1989 to honor the museum’s inaugural director, Ed Spriggs, drawing on a visual language of stylized figures, rhythmic patterning, and symbolic passages that echo the legacy of Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 – February 2, 1979), whose signature style blended silhouetted forms, limited color palettes, and radiating concentric circles to narrate Black history and spiritual striving. Douglas—often called the “father of Black American art”—used this modernist, African‑inflected vocabulary to visualize African American progress from enslavement to self‑determination, and Maynard’s gate similarly frames entry to Hammonds House as a journey through ancestry, struggle, and hope. The Ancestoral Gate design was commissioned through the Lawrence M. Hilton Foundation in 2025 and executed in metal by Baltimore artist Michael Anthony Brown, extending Maynard’s concept into a newly fabricated threshold that welcomes visitors into the museum’s historic home and its community of artists and ancestors.