Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice
Exhibition Archive
Learn about past exhibits and view the catalogs and brochures for the exhibitions.
2023-2024
Curated by Melaine Ferdinand-King, PhD Candidate in Africana Studies
Featuring the artwork of Spring 2023 Heimark Artist in Residence, Renée Elizabeth Neely-TANNER
2022-2023
Migration Stories of Latinx and Caribbean Restauranteurs in Providence, RI
A 10th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition
2020-2022
“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God Is Change.” – Octavia Estelle Butler Memorial Epitaph, 1947-2006
2019-2020
This year's graduating Fellow for the Study of the Public History of Slavery, Chandra Marshall, used her capstone project to focus on the intersections between African American and Native American histories.
Internationally acclaimed Haitian American sculptor and painter Edouard Duval-Carrié displays a series of resin and plexiglass artworks inspired by the complex histories of the Caribbean, including slavery, migration, colonialism and Afro-religious practices.
2018-2019
Highlights the cooking practices of six Rhode Island families: Alcantara, Aubourg, Malabre, da Graça, Jones, and Powell.
An exhibition of paintings by 2019 Heimark Artist in Residence, Renold Laurent, a Haitian artist based in Boston.
In this exhibition we tell the story of the relationship between the Black organizing tradition and the movement. We trace the tradition from the moment of emancipation until the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson. It is a story not often told, yet it is a necessary one for our times.
2017-2018
The work of 2018 Heimark Artist in Residence Jessica Hill examines the resilience of black womanhood today.
2016-2017
The exhibit examines material culture to understand the ways in which the institution of racial slavery shaped the daily lives of all Rhode Islanders.
During the the first week of August 2016, eleven students from Youth In Action moved on to Brown’s campus for a week of Uncovering the Institution, a program at the Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice.
Scholars from Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), in collaboration with the Iziko Museums of South Africa, have produced the Singing Freedom Catalogue, a comprehensive educational resource that complements the exhibition "Singing Freedom: Music and the struggle against apartheid."
This exhibit examines the ways in which slavery shaped the founding of our country and its universities.
American Slavery and The University
This exhibition examines the stories of the African Americans who migrated from the rural South to make their home in the coal fields of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Eastern Kentucky.
2015-2016
This work of art aims to promote self-reflexivity, reflecting on where you are in order to grow in love, in healing, and in solidarity.
The shackles, recently acquired by the museum, are of a type used to transport captured Africans to slavery in the Americas, part of the “Middle Passage” of the transatlantic slave trade.
Mali Olatunji is a fine arts photographer from the Caribbean territory of Antigua and Barbuda. His painterly photography is an original aesthetic birth, one that has brought this visual art a new technique and a novel vision.
The work of Tony Ramos as a pioneering performance and media artist is framed by his sojourns from Rhode Island to Cape Verde.
Racial slavery remains one of the most vexed issues in American and New World history. Its legacies haunt and shape our contemporary lives.
2014-2015
This is an interactive exhibit that combines a history of chain gangs with modern dance and embodying the stories of others.
The exhibition, Black Experiences at Brown: a Visual Narrative, part of Brown's semiquincentenary celebration is currently on display in the Center’s gallery. This interactive exhibition chronicles the evolution of African Americans at Brown.
Changing America examines the Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington, two events separated by one hundred years, yet profoundly linked together in a larger story of liberty and the American experience.
This timeline is a living archival document recognizing Black presence at and transformation of Brown University.
2013-2014
This exhibition by one of Haiti's leading artists, Edouard Duval-Carrié, will pay attention to the many different ways in which the leader of the Revolution, Toussaint L'Ouverture, was portrayed.
2012-2013
This exhibition tells the story of slave insurrections on three vessels including the Amistad, the Meermin, and the Sally.