Online Exhibitions

  • The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World Image

    The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

    Over the course of nearly 20 centuries, millions of East Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and its several seas and adjoining bodies of water in their journey to distant lands, from Arabia and Iraq to India and Sri Lanka. They Africanized the Indian Ocean world and helped shape the societies they entered and made their own. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World traces their truly unique and fascinating story of struggles and achievements across a variety of societies, cultures, religions, languages and times.

  • African & African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century Image

    Africana Age: African & African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century

    By the end of the 19th century, Africans and peoples of African descent—except the Ethiopians, the Haitians and the Liberians—were living under some form of European colonial domination. The history of Africa and its Diaspora was dismissed as insignificant at best, inexistent at worse. Black cultures were ridiculed, stereotyped, and scorned. But over the course of the last 100 years black peoples the world over launched epic struggles for freedom, civil rights, and independence. Africana Age retraces this turbulent history of challenges, tragedies, and triumphs.

  • The Forgotten Story Image

    The Abolition of the Slave Trade: The Forgotten Story

    The abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was a long, arduous, and tortuous process that spanned almost nine decades. Ultimately, a conjunction of economic, political, social, and moral factors contributed to the slow extinction of the legal slave trade and the end of the illegal introductions that, in several countries, had taken its place. Explore this forgotten story with the help of essays, books, articles, maps, and illustrations.

  • Treasures of The New York Public Library

    Watch as curators, librarians, and special guests, like chef Lidia Bastianich and pianist Margaret Leng Tan, share their passion for the treasures of our remarkable collections. Travel the Spuyten Duyvil Creek in 1777, hear music recorded 100 years ago on wax cylinders, marvel at rare 1920s Japanese comics and other pop ephemera, enter the turnstile at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, hit the road with the Beats, and witness how photographers have engaged the world from the 19th century up to the present-day work of photojournalist Stephen Dupont.

  • African Americans and American Politics: An Exhibition From The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

    Before Barack Obama, there was Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass, the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and a host of other heroes and heroines of the African-American struggle for freedom and human dignity, fighting to make America and American Democracy real for all of its citizens. Like Attucks, people of African descent were there at the founding of the nation. And since Attucks, millions have fought, bled, and died to help define, defend, and protect the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. African Americans and American Politics is a brief survey of that quest over the last 200+ years.

  • African Burial Ground

    More than a decade ago in New York City, archaeologists excavated one of the most significant finds in American history: the largest known intact colonial African cemetery in America, the African Burial Ground. This exhibition explores some of the burial sites and artifacts found during the excavations. Slide shows and videos document the Rites of Ancestral Return, which took place in October 2003.

  • Harlem 1900-1940

    This exhibition presents various elements of the history of the urban experience in Harlem's early days as the Cultural Capital of African Americans. This history education portfolio provides a timeline and lesson plans.

  • In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience

    In Motion presents a new interpretation of African-American history: it focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. With 16,000 pages of text, 8,300 illustrations, numerous maps, and lesson plans, this exhibition documents 400 years of migration to, within, and out of the United States.

  • Lest We Forget: The Triumph Over Slavery

    Though victimized, exploited, and oppressed, Africans in the Americas have been active, creative agents of their own history, culture, and political future. Their story is about living, surviving, and winning in the face of seemingly insurmountable hardship. Lest We Forget documents and interprets the obstacle-ridden but life-affirming experiences of the Africans who were enslaved in the Western Hemisphere.

  • Malcolm X: A Search for Truth

    Based in part on the collection of personal and professional papers and memorabilia of Malcolm X deposited at the Schomburg Center, Malcom X: A Search for Truth presents a provocative and informative perspective on his life. This exhibition poses questions about the nature of the journey that Malcolm Little pursued to become El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, focusing on the process and products of his driving intellectual quest for truth about himself, his family, his people, his country, and his world.