The Smithsonian Looks at How the Slave Trade Shaped the World

Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times

“In Slavery’s Wake,” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, looks beyond the United States to tell a global story.

“In Slavery’s Wake,” a new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, deals in huge themes and vast numbers. Over four centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were transported across the ocean on more than 36,000 voyages, an epochal forced migration that reshaped societies on both sides of the Atlantic.

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“In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World,” which opens on Friday, is one of the most ambitious shows the museum has presented since it opened on the National Mall eight years ago. The product of a 10-year collaboration among nearly two dozen curators at 10 institutions on four continents, it goes beyond the Smithsonian’s traditional American focus to tell a global story of the ways that slavery shaped the modern world.

It’s a story of trade, capitalism, exploitation and violence, but also of the ways that the enslaved and their descendants constantly pushed back, creating their own freedom in ways big and small.

“If we’re talking about violence and attempted dehumanization, we’re also talking about the way people resisted and held on to their humanity,” Paul Gardullo, the museum’s assistant director of history and one of the exhibition’s directors, said.

After closing in Washington next June, the show will travel to partner museums in Brazil, South Africa, Senegal, Belgium and Britain, switching languages — and swapping out some objects — along the way.

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Visit our exhibit Kidnapped: The Middle Passage for more on the Transatlantic slave trade.

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