Special Collections Collaborates with Women's Center Exhibit

Exhibit Title Image for Existence as Resistance: The Magic in Blackness

On February 18th, 2020, the NC State Women's Center celebrated the opening of their annual spring exhibit at the African American Cultural Center Art Gallery located in Witherspoon 201. This year's exhibit theme was titled, Existence as Resistance: The Magic in Blackness. The exhibition involved photography and art featuring NC State students, staff, and faculty through an Afrofuturist lens in order to imagine and create radical Black futures for the subjects and viewers.

Portraits and artwork of Angela Gay (left), exhibit curator and Assistant Director of the Women’s Center, and Toni Thorpe (right), former Program Coordinator for the African American Cultural Center.
Portraits and artwork of Angela Gay (left), exhibit curator and Assistant Director of the Women’s Center, and Toni Thorpe (right), former Program Coordinator for the African American Cultural Center.

NCSU Libraries Fellow, Victor Betts, from the Special Collections Resource Center collaborated with the Assistant Director of Women's Center, Angela Gay, to curate a section of the exhibit called "Imagining Black Futures Through the Archives". Using photographic images from the university archives, the photographs highlight historical moments from NC State history specific to the Black experience. The exhibit will be on display until April 17th, 2020.

Images from Special Collections, curated by Libraries Fellow Victor Betts, with discussion questions as part of “Imagining Black Futures Through the Archives” exhibit section.
Images from Special Collections, curated by Libraries Fellow Victor Betts, with discussion questions as part of “Imagining Black Futures Through the Archives” exhibit section.

 

The Wolf Tales program was also present at the opening. Temporarily situated in the African American Cultural Center Library for the evening, SCRC staff created space for visitors to share their stories and impressions of the exhibit in recordings that will be preserved and shared through the Libraries’ Rare and Unique Digital Collections site. 

The university archives images on display at the exhibit are available for research. The Special Collections Research Center contains a growing collection which can be accessed by searching our digitized collections and online collection guides.