Upcoming Special Exhibitions
Purchased Lives: The American Slave Trade From 1808 to 1865
February 10, 2019 – August 25, 2019
Main Special Exhibition Space
Sale of Estates, Pictures and Slaves in the Rotunda, New Orleans; by William Henry Brooke.
Purchased Lives: The American Slave Trade from 1808 to 1865 personalizes the pain and injustice of the American domestic slave trade. The exhibition illuminates just how widespread the practice of slavery was in American life, as well as its impact on slave families across the country.
It showcases more than 75 original artifacts, including period paintings and first-person accounts from slave narratives and oral histories. Through interactive displays, Purchased Lives allows visitors to engage directly with the historical record by tracking the shipment of more than 70,000 people to New Orleans. The exhibit also contains a collection of “Lost Friends” ads placed after the Civil War by newly freed people attempting to locate family members. These ads specifically address slave families looking for friends and loved ones in Illinois and were placed up into the early 1900s.
Exhibition by The Historic New Orleans Collection.
Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross
September 22, 2019 – January 12, 2020
Main Special Exhibition Space
Excavating the box of negatives and documents Henryk Ross buried in the ghetto at 12 Jagielonska Street, Lodz, March 1945. © Art Gallery of Ontario.
Memory Unearthed offers an extraordinarily rare glimpse of life inside the Lodz Ghetto during its existence from 1940 to 1944, through the lens of Polish Jewish photojournalist Henryk Ross (1910–1991).
This exhibit presents more than 300 of Ross’s powerful photographs, comprising a moving, intimate visual record of the Holocaust. The images are accompanied by artifacts, including Ross’s own identity card, and ghetto notices. An album of contact prints, handcrafted by Ross and shown in its entirety as the centerpiece of the exhibition, serves as a summation of his memories, capturing his personal narrative.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.
