The International African American Museum opens today in Charleston, South Carolina. It features exhibits and artifacts exploring how African Americans’ labor and resistance shaped the Carolinas, the nation and the world.
The opening happens at a time when the very idea of Black people’s survival through slavery, racial apartheid and economic oppression being quintessential to the American story is being challenged throughout the U.S. Leaders of the museum said its existence is not a rebuttal to current attempts to suppress history, but rather an invitation to dialogue and discovery.
A visitor takes a picture at the opening of the International African American Museum on Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Charleston, S.C. Overlooking the old wharf at which nearly half of the enslaved population first entered North America, the 150,000-square foot museum houses exhibits and artifacts exploring how African Americans’ labor, perseverance, resistance and cultures shaped the Carolinas, the nation and the world.
On Saturday, the museum grounds buzzed with excitement as its founders, staff, elected officials and other invited guests dedicated the grounds in spectacular fashion. Planning for the International African American Museum dates back to 2000, when Riley called for its creation in a State of the City address. It took many more years, through setbacks in fundraising and changes in museum leadership, before construction started in 2019.
The museum’s main structure does not touch the hallowed grounds on which it is located. Instead, it is hoisted above the wharf by 18 cylindrical columns. Beneath the structure is a shallow fountain tribute to the men, women and children whose bodies were inhumanely shackled together in the bellies of ships in the transatlantic slave trade.
Walter Hood, founder and creative director of Hood Design Studios based in Oakland, California, designed the landscape of the museum’s grounds. The designs are inspired by tours of lowcountry and its former plantations, he said. The lush grounds, winding paths and seating areas are meant to be an ethnobotanical garden, forcing visitors to see how the botany of enslaved Africans and their descendants helped shape what still exists today across the Carolinas.
“This is such an incredibly expansive history, there’s room for 25 more museums that would have opportunities to bring a new curatorial lens to this conversation,” she said.
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports
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At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports
Leer más »
At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports.
Leer más »
At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinWhen the International African American Museum opens to the public Tuesday in South Carolina, it becomes a new site of homecoming and pilgrimage for descendants of enslaved Africans whose arrival in the Western Hemisphere begins on the docks of the lowcountry coast.
Leer más »
At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinThe International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports.
Leer más »
At International African American Museum opening, a reclaiming of sacred ground for enslaved kinWhen the International African American Museum opens to the public Tuesday in South Carolina, it becomes a new site of homecoming and pilgrimage for descendants of enslaved Africans whose arrival in the Western Hemisphere begins on the docks of the lowcountry coast.
Leer más »