Innovative. Vanguard. Experimental.
Current Exhibitions
Torture Island: Past, Present, Future (Opens February 1)
In partnership with RPMP, Weeksville Heritage Center presents The Rikers Public Memory Project: Torture Island: Past, Present, Future, an exhibition showcasing works from its ongoing initiative with Freedom Agenda, Create Forward, and the Humanities Action Lab. The exhibition features creative works by the 2024 Narrative Change Community Fellows alongside historical context and personal stories about Rikers Island, the active New York City jail complex located in the East River.
Upcoming Exhibitions
Iterative Fictions [IF]
Weeksville Heritage Center is pleased to announce Iterative Fictions [IF], an exhibition featuring new sculpture, sound, and mixed-reality artworks by Eto Otitigbe, culminating his tenure as the 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Weeksville Heritage Center. [IF] invites audiences to engage with narratives reshaped through cycles of storytelling, animating objects from Weeksville’s archival collection.
Past Exhibitions
In Pursuit of Freedom
In Pursuit of Freedom, a collaboration with the Brooklyn Historical Society and Irondale Theater, is a thought-provoking multimedia exhibition that explores the origins of one of the first free black communities in the country. This special exhibition encourages visitors to make discoveries and establish their own meaning about the significance of the pursuit of equity and social justice in america.
Forward Ever—Celebrating Where We At Black Women Artists (1971-Now)
Forward Ever—Celebrating Where We At Black Women Artists, (1971-Now), at Weeksville Heritage Center presents works from members Claudia Aziza Gibson-Hunter, Sadikisha Collier, Jerrolyn Crooks deGracia, Charlotte Ka, Dindga McCannon, Ann Tanksley, Joyce Wellman, and Viola Burley Leak, reflecting on the broader narrative of Black women in art. This exhibition invites us to question how we can sustain spaces that nurture the artistic pursuits of those at the furthest margins, reject the gatekeeping that stifles creativity, and transcend our silos as we harness the power of the collective to support each other on life’s journey.
Inheritance/SHACK
Inheritance/SHACK is a socially engaged collaborative art project inspired by artist Beverly Buchanan’s vernacular shack sculptures – loose interpretations of the cabins that punctuate the Southern landscape. We gathered a group of thirteen community residents from Brooklyn to learn carpentry to design, build, and install shack-like sculptures (birdhouses). Community members engaged deeply with notions presented in Buchanan’s work surrounding domestic architecture as a cultural, economic, and environmental metaphor. Inheritance/SHACK is a space of inquiry for enacting rituals of collective learning, dialogue and speculative imagining about the meaning of inheritance, the cultural necessity of holding African American space and the cultural, symbolic significance of Weeksville.
Imagining Our Future
Imagining Our Future brings together eleven artists from Brooklyn and beyond. From healing societal wounds, strengthening bonds between each other, and becoming better stewards of our natural world, these artists speak to the collective nurturing of our immediate environments as we prepare to birth new worlds together. This exhibition is on view from May 9 to May 31, 2024 at the Weeksville Heritage Center.
40 ACRES: Weeksville
40 ACRES: Weeksville is a photo and video installation by Sandy Williams IV, an artist and educator, who’s work pays homage to the memory of Freedmen communities and acknowledges histories and social oppressions that are often unseen and paved over. 40 Acres is a multilayered public performance using the sky above Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as its stage. The exhibition was on view from February 10th – April 6th, 2024 at Weeksville Heritage Center.
Resurrect / Resistance
“What do Black communities across the diaspora need to resurrect to liberate and heal ourselves?”
“Resurrect / Resistance,” on view at Weeksville Heritage Center November 2 – 25, 2023, explored this inquiry with works by visual artists Deenps “Granbwa” Bazile, Marco Rios, and Josué Guarionex. Curated by Manuela Arciniegas and Erica Harper, the exhibition explored themes of ancestral and spiritual resurrection, along with self and community healing.
Home is Where the Hip-Hop Is
The “Home is Where the Hip-Hop Is” Exhibition showed at weeksville from November – January of 2023.
We explored the power of hip-hop through a collection of images from Ralph McDaniels, Ernie Paniccioli, Delphine Fawundu and Jamel Shabazz—photographers who have captured the spirit of NYC’s urban culture for over 30 years.
Black Exhale NEST
Beginning on June 1, 2022 a human-sized nest was constructed out of natural materials at Weeksville by a gathering community and young creatives from Recess Art’s Assembly program to build sanctuary space for those entering the Black Exhale “NEST”. The exhibition was on view through June 29.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me: So let’s start a got damn revolution
Brooklyn-based performance artist Ayana Evans presents a site-specific, public art project on Weeksville Heritage Center’s exterior windows from April 9–May 15, 2022. The installation featured a series of videos with images from Ayana’s performance archive combined with text highlighting statistics on mass incarceration and economic inequality in New York City.