How the Truth Is Passed

The Global Curatorial Project partners with the Brazilian Natural History Museum to center oral histories in the exploration of enslavement and the legacy of European colonialism.

From the Brown University Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice:

As part of “Unfinished Conversations,” researchers from across the world, led by the Simmons Center, collected more than 150 oral histories about individuals’ experiences with the legacies of racial slavery and colonialism — an archive now available to the public through the Brown Digital Repository. Multiple Brown students, including Etoundi, were involved in revising, editing and summarizing transcripts for the archive.

The work stemmed from the Global Curatorial Project, which was formed in 2014 when the Simmons Center invited scholars from global museums to come together to address the topics of racial slavery, colonialism and public history. 

In addition to the exhibit at the Instituto Pretos Novos, a traveling version of another exhibition co-curated by the Simmons Center, “In Slavery’s Wake”— which premiered at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., in 2024 — has opened at Brazil’s national history museum in Rio de Janeiro. Translated from Portuguese as “Beyond Slavery: Building Black Freedom in the World,” it is on view at the Museu Historico Nacional through March 1, 2026, and integrates the oral histories collected as part of the “Unfinished Conversations” series. | You can learn more HERE.

Exhibitions in Brazil showcase global slavery oral history project led by Brown’s Simmons Center

Research led by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice is highlighted in two museums in Rio de Janeiro in exhibitions that focus on the global legacies of racial slavery.

Brown University

The Unfinished Conversations Series Exhibition

Exhibition on view May 23 through December 12, 2025 A glimpse into the living repository of over 150 oral histories that has been collected to tell the global story of how racial slavery and European colonialism were foundational planks of the making of the modern world.

Simmons Center | Brown University

Global Curatorial Project

This exhibition and curatorial project presents both the global interconnectedness of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade, as well as illuminates an alternative view about the history of our global modernity. Jointly led by the Simmons Center and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.

Simmons Center | Brown University

Brown’s Simmons Center co-organizes major Smithsonian exhibition on global legacies of slavery

“In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture prominently features Brown University research, scholarship and artifacts.

Brown University