Brown’s Simmons Center co-organizes major Smithsonian exhibition on global legacies of slavery

WASHINGTON, D.C. [Brown University] - A decade-long global research initiative led by Brown University's Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice has culminated in a new, major Smithsonian Institution exhibition at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

Co-organized by the Simmons Center and the museum's Center for the Study of Global Slavery, "In Slavery's Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World," approaches the history of slavery and colonialism from an international perspective, rather than the more traditional local or national lens, and it centers the voices of those affected, according to Simmons Center Director Anthony Bogues.

"It's clear that racial slavery was not a local or regional phenomenon but a global historical process that was the foundational grounds for the making of the modern world," Bogues said. "It's imperative that we consider the implications of that, as they still live with us today."

The exhibition opened in December and will remain on view through June 8, 2025, after which it will reach audiences worldwide as it travels to museums in Belgium, Brazil, England, Senegal and South Africa.

"'In Slavery's Wake' is such an impressive achievement - of collaborative process as much as the stunning exhibit itself," said Brown Professor of History Karin Wulf, director of the John Carter Brown Library, which contributed artifacts to the exhibition.

The exhibition was developed over many years with continuous input and collaboration from the Global Curatorial Project, an international network of nearly two dozen public history scholars, curators and educators that was catalyzed during a conference Bogues led at Brown in 2014.

"Brown has been an incredibly rich resource of knowledge for this project," said Paul Gardullo, director of the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "The model set by the Simmons Center [is one] of incredible ethical partnership and collaborative spirit with our global curatorial partners."

In addition to hundreds of artifacts, images and artworks, the exhibition debuts a new collection of nearly 150 oral histories documenting the impact of global slavery and colonialism, collected through the Simmons Center-led "Unfinished Conversations " historical archival project.

Excerpts from the filmed oral histories, which will be digitally archived and housed at Brown's John Hay Library, are incorporated throughout the exhibition and in its 225-page catalog, published by Smithsonian Books.

"I think 'Unfinished Conversations' is the most important part of this project," Gardullo said. "When you're trying to tell a new story about slavery and colonialism that privileges the people and the lives of those who were enslaved or colonized, you need to create new archives that centralize those stories."

Working closely with local curators and guides in eight countries on four continents, Bogues and fellow members of the Global Curatorial Project conducted the oral history interviews over several years, with grant support from the Abrams Foundation and the Wyncote Foundation. Interview questions focused on themes related to the topics of "how slavery shaped this place" and "why it still matters here," yielding deeply personal stories and reflections related to resistance, resilience and memory.

"Now we have archived voices that have never been heard before, speaking to the way this past has shaped our present, and people speaking to their visions for the future," Gardullo said. "I think it's going to inspire people to give voices to their own memories and visions."

While the full "Unfinished Conversations" collection will be archived digitally at Brown, each curatorial partner and the interviewees will retain their full archive of interviews for their own use, according to Bogues.

"There's historical significance for the work we've done, both at the level of non-extractive curation that foregrounds the voices of the colonized and enslaved, and for the study of slavery itself," said Bogues, who is a professor of humanities and of Africana studies at Brown.

The Simmons Center worked with a freelance director and editor and a team of Brown undergraduate and graduate students to develop an hour-long "Unfinished Conversations" documentary film, which includes interviews with the global curators and excerpts from the oral history interviews. Bogues expects it to be screened on the Brown campus during the Spring 2025 semester.

Brown University President Christina H. Paxson called the debut of "In Slavery's Wake" a powerful testament to the importance and value of the humanities.

"The endeavors of the Simmons Center team and its global partners to unearth buried histories bring to the forefront new insights on not just the past, but pressing questions facing the world today," Paxson said. "And what better way to share those findings with the greater public than a compelling exhibition at the Smithsonian that promises to educate and inspire many thousands of visitors from across the nation and the world?"

Artifacts from Brown's library collections enhance exhibition

In addition to the oral histories collected by the Simmons Center, four artifacts from the collections of the Brown University Library and the John Carter Brown Library, an independent research library on Brown's campus, are included in "In Slavery's Wake," in a section called "Abolition in Action."

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