A History for the Future

This past semester, Rollins faculty, staff, and students were hard at work uncovering untold histories from the Great Migration for an original art installation coming to campus next year.

Legendary voices like Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes are household names, but what about Rita Dove and Countee Cullen? These Black poets are among hundreds of influential figures explored by Rollins faculty, staff, and students for a groundbreaking new project from the famed British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare.

Commissioned by Barbara ’68 and Ted Alfond ’68, the final artwork will be part of the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art and will be installed in 2022 in Kathleen W. Rollins Hall. The visual and historical masterpiece will feature a collection of 600 hardcover books, each bound in dazzling African wax paper and bearing the name of a poet, philosopher, or historian with personal or ancestral ties to the 20th-century Great Migration.

Heading up the project is history professor Claire Strom, who assembled an interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff advisors as well as a group of 12 student interns who conducted research throughout the spring semester.

In 2022, artist Yinka Shonibare’s commissioned artwork will be permanently installed in Kathleen W. Rollins Hall. Part of the American Library collection, the final piece will be similar to this installation at the Cleveland Public Library.

Yinka Shonibare, CBE | The American Library, 2018 | Hardback books, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, gold foiled names, headphones, interactive application | Dimensions 22 | Summer 2021 variable | Installation View at FRONT International, Cleveland Triennial located at the Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland, OH, 2018

Rewarding Research

“Shonibare is hugely famous,” says Strom. “It’s exciting that students are being able to help create this piece of art that is going to exist for a long time and to define, through whom they choose, what we mean by the Great Migration.”

The majority of the figures will be portraits of success and struggle, innovation and inspiration, celebrating well-known figures alongside the previously unsung. In addition to combing through sources like the trailblazing Chicago Defender newspaper and the Journal of African American History, some of the student interns were able to speak with contemporary subjects in real time to confirm that their ancestors had relocated in the right time period.

“It’s rewarding to see your efforts pay off and be able to add another person to the spreadsheet,” says Sendy Neika Sejourne ’23, a health services leadership and management major in Rollins’ Hamilton Holt School. “The biggest challenge for me is tracing their steps and reasoning for migrating north.”

Artis Gunn ’22, an English and history double major and aspiring professor, appreciates the timing of this project in light of the rise of human rights movements such as Black Lives Matter.

“One of the beautiful parts about this project is that we’re shedding light on the multiple contributions African Americans have made on society,” says Gunn, “and we’re bringing their works to Rollins so that hopefully they’ll reach a wider audience.”

Collaboration in Action

Not only is the project a collaboration between faculty, staff, and students in everything from history to health, but it’s also a cross-continental collaboration with the London-based artist himself.

Shonibare’s work—which has appeared everywhere from New York City’s Museum of Modern Art to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum—focuses on the idea of a hybrid rather than a forced categorization of concepts or events. For example, the backstory of African wax print textiles, whose vibe has become a symbol of pride in Black heritage, is part of his statement on globalism.

“The history is such that the design comes from Indonesia, the manufacturing comes from the Netherlands, and then they were sold to West Africa starting in the late 19th century,” says art history professor MacKenzie Moon Ryan, who wrote her master’s thesis on Shonibare. “It doesn’t have to be one-dimensional. It can be a messier product that’s designed in one place, manufactured in another, but adopted and really embraced as part of the sign of identity that transcends one geographic region.”

Next Steps

The Rollins research team has shared their chosen 600 biographies with Shonibare’s team in London, so now the artists will begin the next phase of coating the books with wax print paper, gold-embossing onto the spines the names of the pivotal African Americans who shaped the American cultural landscape.

In 2022, the Great Migration piece of Shonibare’s American Library collection will find an apt home in Rollins’ headquarters of engaged learning, Kathleen W. Rollins Hall, where it will invite exploration and inquiry for years to come. The permanent work will include interactive biographies featured on an accompanying iPad, and anyone who seeks to contribute a story of their own can expand the virtual library.

One of the beautiful parts about this project is that we’re shedding light on the multiple contributions African Americans have made on society, and we’re bringing their works to Rollins so that hopefully they’ll reach a Rollins.edu | 23wider audience. — Artis Gunn ’22