Exhibition details
This exhibition is both a love letter and a battle cry. It honors the centennial of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, born from Arturo Schomburg’s radical vow to “dig up the past.” Guarionex (The Brave Noble Lord), named after the Taíno cacique who resisted colonial erasure and used by Schomburg as a pseudonym, reimagines his 1925 essay “The Negro Digs Up His Past” as a living manifesto for our fractured present.
Additional Details
In collaboration with the Countee Cullen Library, emerging artists from the Schomburg Junior Scholars Program, Crossroads Juvenile Center, and Horizon Juvenile Center respond to Schomburg’s call through 16 immersive dioramas that blend archival research with Afro-surrealist imagination.
Each wall case opens a portal where the Center’s century-old holdings—runaway slave ads, daguerreotypes, maps of maroon colonies—interact with speculative, AI-generated visions of the future. Nails, mirrors, herbs, and bones populate these worlds, each element holding symbolic and cultural resonance.
Each wall case opens a portal where the Center’s century-old holdings—runaway slave ads, daguerreotypes, maps of maroon colonies—interact with speculative, AI-generated visions of the future. Nails, mirrors, herbs, and bones populate these worlds, each element holding symbolic and cultural resonance.
Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Blvd
New York, NY
Image: Artwork by M. Scott Johnson / courtesy of New York Public Library