Projects

Visionary Aponte: Art & Black Freedom

Fall 2018: 9 Weeks of Visionary Aponte at Duke

The Artifact

Scholars contexualize the extraordinary — and now lost — “Book of Paintings” created by the Black Cuban revolutionary José Antonio Aponte.

Art Exhibition

15 contemporary artists reimagine Aponte’s book for our present and future.

Event Series

Artists, performers, activists, and scholars invite us to rethink the role of art and history in shaping social and political change.

Residencies

Artists in residence at Duke create and unveil new works in conversation with Aponte’s book and the exhibit.

Musical Passage

With the creation of Musical Passage: Voyage to 1688 Jamaica, historian Laurent Dubois, composer David K. Garner, and literary scholar Mary Caton Lingold tell the story of a travel document and provide recordings that interpret the fascinating music unexpectedly found within its pages.

They highlight the role of “Mr. Baptiste,” the unknown musician tasked with the writing of the notation, arguing that he may have been a freed black performer native to the colonies, and a composer. The Musical Passage website makes it possible to engage with the music of New World Africans whose enduring legacy fell silent in the historical record for far too long.

Radio Haiti Lives

The Radio Haiti Archive, housed in the Human Rights Archive at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, is an invaluable resource for scholars, educators, and members of the public interested in twentieth-century Haitian politics, society, and culture.

The project resulted in the preservation of the comprehensive archives of Radio Haïti-Inter, the voice of Haitian democracy from the station’s genesis in the 1960s to its closure in 2003.