Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2024.
Engagement at the Smithsonian.
In 2014, my company received a request from the Smithsonian for image research and procurement support. The Smithsonian was hard at work developing the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which was two years into construction. Its curatorial and design teams needed help with image research and licensing to get the Museum open by 2016. Working in tandem with the Museum’s project managers, we procured thousands of images for the inaugural exhibits, an effort as enormous in scope as it was professionally rewarding.
My relationship with the Smithsonian continues to this day. At NMAAHC, I’ve been thrilled to work on temporary exhibits including We Return Fighting: The African American Experience in World War I, Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures, and In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World. Each of these challenging projects introduced me to a new array of archival collections in the U.S. and abroad.
For We Return Fighting, the National Archives’ material on the 369th Infantry Regiment (the Harlem Hellfighters) was especially valuable, as were archives in the U.K. and Europe documenting African and African American soldiers during wartime. In Slavery’s Wake required a deep dive into holdings around the world, including some held in Senegal, Portugal, Brazil, Belgium, and South Africa, a task as administratively complicated as it was linguistically challenging. And Afrofuturism, a career favorite for sure, offered a wonderful chance to connect with contemporary artists and filmmakers and to work with the Museum’s media partners at Black Robin Media, who brought enormous energy and knowledge to the project.
