How does one remember contested histories, such as that of slavery, whose material evidence has been deliberately destroyed, whose traces may be “hidden in plain sight” — to quote NMAAHC Founding Director, Lonnie Bunch — or whose recollection may be still too painful? 

On Thursday, March 10, 2022, Mabel O. Wilson delivers the first annual Spear Lecture, “Can We Forget? A Memorial to Enslaved Laborers,” co-hosted by the Department of Visual Art and Department of the History of Art and Architecture. Wilson is a cultural historian, architectural designer, and curator who teaches Architecture and Black Studies at Columbia University, where she also serves as the director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies. 

She co-designed the University of Virginia’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, which was built in 2020 and is the subject matter of her talk at Brown.

The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers attempts to honor the lives, labor, and agency of the approximately 4,000 enslaved people who lived and worked at UVA between 1817 and 1865. In doing so, the monument wrestles with the questions of how to simultaneously remember the pain of bondage and the dignity of those who were subjected to it. In her talk, Wilson will discuss the architecture of a commemoration, and what it means to shape space in the wake, or “afterlife” — to quote Columbia University Professor, Saidiya Hartman — of slavery.

The Spear Lecture takes place on Thursday, March 10, 2022 in List Art Center 120, from 5:30-6:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public, and is presented in conjunction with the Department of the History of Art and Architecture’s 2021-2022 lecture series, On Speculation.