Gallery Purchase
Photos courtesy of the artist and PATRON Gallery, Chicago, IL.
Photo Credit: Tim Johnson

Written by the Rev. Samuel F. Smith in 1831, "My Country ’Tis of Thee" (also known as "America") debuted on July 4, 1831. Before Smith’s lyrics were sung aloud, the tune for "America" had already served as the national anthem for at least six other countries, including the United Kingdom’s "God Save the Queen".

The song is a contrafactum, in which one text is substituted for another while the music remains largely the same. Since Smith’s writing, the tune has been reused in support of a number of issues, including temperance, suffrage, abolition, and even the Confederacy.

Collins’s America: A Hymnal includes one hundred such versions, bound chronologically in a horizontal format that alludes to 19th-century shape note hymnals, musical notations found in congregational songbooks. On each page, Collins burned and etched away the unifying thread—the tune—leaving behind only difference and dissonance in the remaining words. Opening the book releases a charred smell. Bits of text tangle and flake off, altering the book each time it is handled. Within the edition of twenty-five, no two are alike. Collins conceived America: A Hymnal in response to the 2016 election in an attempt to articulate what it means to be an American.

Bibliography

Almeida, Celia. “Bethany Collins' America: A Hymnal Offers Refuge From Basel and American Madness.” Patron Gallery, Patron Gallery, 5 Dec. 2018.

Cardin, Dinah. “A Word with Bethany Collins.” Peabody Essex Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, 11 Mar. 2020.

Moffitt, Evan. “What Can't Be Read: How Bethany Collins, Steffani Jemison, Adam Pendleton and Kameelah Janan Rasheed Are Using the Tradition of Black Radical Poetry to Examine Questions of Subjectivity and Race.” Frieze, no. 192, 2017.

Newman, Lia & Van E. Hillard. Seeing/Saying: Images and Text. Davidson, North Carolina: Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, 2016.

Schwartzburg, Molly. “A Book for This Moment and for This Library: Bethany Collins's ‘America: A Hymnal.’” Notes from Under Grounds, University of Virginia Library, 25 Jan. 2018.

Exploring American Identity Through Bethany Collins’ Hymnals, by Oliver Poduschnick ’25