Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Exhibition Archive

Learn about past exhibits curated by and/or hosted at the Simmons Center, and view their catalogs, brochures, and associated event archives.

Breadcrumb

2025–2026

The Unfinished Conversations Series | South Africa Exhibition, 2026

Exhibition on view May 28, 2026 at the Iziko Slave Lodge in Cape Town, South Africa

“The Unfinished Conversations Series: Colonial Slavery and its Afterlives In South Africa, An Oral History Archive” is a glimpse into the living repository of over 150 oral histories that has been collected to tell the global story of how racial slavery and European colonialism were foundational planks of the making of the modern world.

Sites of Remaking: Port Cities and Our Present

Exhibition on view in the Simmons Center gallery March 30 through October 24, 2026.
This exhibition explores themes of freedom-making, resistance, place-making and the legacies of slavery through works by three Rhode Island-based multi-disciplinary artists: Jazzmen Lee-Johnson, Kia Lenise and Spencer Evans. Curated by Ivie Orobaton, A.M. Candidate in Public Humanities.

Innocent Knowledge: Israeli and Palestinian Children’s Drawings

Exhibition on view in the Simmons Center gallery January 26–February 20, 2026.
Curated by Canaan Estes, Taher Vahanvaty, and Katharina Galor, Innocent Knowledge gathers images of children’s drawings from fifteen communities across Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The drawings offer a rare and intimate glimpse into how young people experience a deeply fractured and unequal landscape.

The Unfinished Conversations Series | Brazil Exhibition, 2025

On view November 14 through December 15, 2025 at Instituto Pretos Novos – IPN, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"Série Conversas Inacabadas," the Portuguese translation of "The Unfinished Conversations Series," is a glimpse into the living repository of over 150 oral histories that has been collected to tell the global story of how racial slavery and European colonialism were foundational planks of the making of the modern world.

2024–2025

Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea

On view at Mystic Seaport Museum April 20, 2024, through January 19, 2026, "Entwined" is the culminating exhibition for the Reimagining New England Histories project centering maritime histories in Indigenous, African, and African-descended worldviews and experiences.

2023-2024

Art and the Freedom Struggle: The Works of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Exhibition on view March 1 through December 11, 2024
Curated by Melaine Ferdinand-King, PhD Candidate in Africana Studies, this exhibition is a creative companion to the biographical “Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Portrait of Mass Incarceration” exhibit at the John Hay Library at Brown University. Inspired by Mumia Abu-Jamal’s 2012 essay, “Art & Incarceration,” this exhibition underscores the significance of creation under crisis.

2022-2023

2020-2022

reflection / abyss / vision / legacy

“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

Entangled Legacies

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.

Edouard Duval-Carrié and the Art of Embedded 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

Memory Dishes

Highlights the cooking practices of six Rhode Island families: Alcantara, Aubourg, Malabre, da Graça, Jones, and Powell.

Memory Work

An exhibition of paintings by 2019 Heimark Artist in Residence, Renold Laurent, a Haitian artist based in Boston.

Unfinished Business: The Long Civil Rights Movement

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

2016-2017

Singing Freedom: Music and the Struggle Against Apartheid

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."

2015-2016

Exhibit: Slave shackles at the Hay Library

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.

The Painterly Photography: The Art of Mali Olatunji

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.

2014-2015

Breaking Chains

This is an interactive exhibit that combines a history of chain gangs with modern dance and embodying the stories of others.

Black Experiences at Brown: A Visual Narrative Exhibition

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.

Blacks at Brown

This timeline is a living archival document recognizing Black presence at and transformation of Brown University.

2013-2014

2012-2013