Historic Bremen

In the early 1950s, Bremen’s art teacher, Justine Baker, began a project to paint a number of classic film scenes that would become beloved artifacts among Bremen residents for many decades. Most of the scenes are plucked from Disney films, but one shows the characters from The Wizard of Oz (altho the road they’re traveling is red brick instead of yellow, and Dorothy’s shoes seem to be black patent leather rather than ruby red (the movie) or silver (the book).

Children enjoy seeing the paintings in the Bremen History Center and in the meeting room at the front of the building. Some race around the room naming each movie… until they come to The Song of the South. That film has been kept tucked away in the Disney archives for decades due to its depiction of happy slaves in the pre-Civil-War South.

Each student signed the part of the painting that they had worked on. HBI volunteers wrote to the former students and got letters back relating their experiences. Those letters are displayed next to each painting.

Use the right and left arrows to browse the gallery below. Click an image to go to that picture’s page in our Flickr account.