Free as They Want to Be closing in August at the Harvard University

The exhibition Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory co-curated by Cheryl Finley and Deborah Willis which presents contemporary art inspired by historical memory will be closing on June 30th.

The exhibition considers in comparative perspectives the historic and contemporary role photography and film have played in remembering legacies of slavery and its aftermath. It also examines the social lives of a diverse group of Americans within various places—on the land, at home, in photographic albums, at historic sites, and in public memory. Including nineteenth-century photographs made by Cincinnati studio photographer James Presley Ball and other photographs of Black Americans taken during the ongoing struggle for freedom, Free as they want to be offers a view of a people who expressed their desire to be free in early photographic portraits.

The exhibition featured a photographic artwork Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (Madison Washington, The Heroic Slave) from his photographic series Lessons of the Hour. 

Free as They Want to Be, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Arts at the Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, February 25 – June 30, 2025