“Boundless” is the amazing sculpture honoring the United States Colored Troops at the Cameron Art Museum at 3201 South 17th St Wilmington, NC, 28412. I have never seen anything like this. Just off the back of a parking lot, hidden by a cluster of trees, is a squad of Black troops marching up a dirt road! According to the museum:
“In 2021, CAM installed a public sculpture, Boundless, by North Carolina artist Stephen Hayes, a work of art that connects deeply to the land the museum is steward of by telling the story of the brave United States Colored Troops soldiers who fought on this land for their own freedom and the freedom of their loved ones.”
If you enter the museum grounds, instead of going to the museum building, the United States Colored Troops memorial is in the back of the lot on the right side. You will see a sign saying “USCT.” That is where the sculpture is. While the museum has a charge to go inside, “Boundless” is completely free and there is ample free parking just one hundred feet from sculpture.
The path to “Boundless” is flat and paved and it accommodates those, like me, with mobility issues.
In the middle of October of 2026 I was in Wilmington, North Carolina for my niece Jen’s wedding. Hurricane Isaias had made landfall the day before the nuptials and it rained all day when the wedding took place. Of course it was an outdoor wedding in the middle of a botanic garden set near the Cape Fear River. The next day I went to photograph several scenes connected to the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era in the pouring rain. Regular readers know that about 50% of the time I am photographing, the weather conditions are so bad that no one who is approaching seventy should even be out! So, Yes, it was raining.
