Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance

The award-winning Black Atlantic exhibition is coming to LSE in October.

The exhibition, which was first shown at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, reveals the stories that have been silenced from history, not just stories of exploitation, but those of resilience and liberation, too. It shows how through resisting colonial slavery, people produced new cultures known as the Black Atlantic, that continue to shape our world.

More about this event

This exhibition is to celebrate Black History Month.

Join the following talk with Jake Subryan Richards on Thursday 9 October at 6pm where he will discuss the research and creative process behind this award-winning exhibition.

A blog post New stories from the Black Atlantic by Jake Subryan Richards can be read at the LSE Review of Books.

About the curators

Jake Subryan Richards is a historian of the Atlantic world and global history, with interests in legal history, the history of empires, and the African diaspora. His first book, The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2025), provides a new history of slave-trade suppression. The book tells the story of people “liberated” from slaving ships by maritime patrols and then forced into bonded labour by various empires. Richards has published articles in Past and Present, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Modern Intellectual History. He is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Victoria Avery has been Professor of European Sculpture, University of Cambridge, since 2024, and the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Keeper of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, since 2010, prior to which she was Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Warwick. Vicky is an EDI champion and has led the Museum’s Legacies-themed exhibition programme to date. She is co-curator of Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance and co-editor of its book.

Wanja Kimani is the Exhibition Project Curator of Black Atlantic having previously been Research Associate on the 'Art and Work in East Africa: New Engagement in Art Curating' project at Newcastle University. Artist and co-founder of Guzo Art Projects, Wanja has worked with numerous East African artists, and she represented Kenya at the 59th Venice Art Biennale (2022).

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the lead partner of the spectacular collections of the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) and Botanic Garden. From antiquity to the present day, the Fitzwilliam houses a world-renowned collection of over half a million beautiful works of art, masterpiece paintings and historical artefacts.

Twitter hashtag for this event: #LSEArts

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