Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

2022

2024

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Project, My Ancestors' Garden, 2022

This is a Project. It was designed by Hood Design Studio and collaborator: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and made for (as the client) International African American Museum and City of Charleston. It is dated 2022. It is a part of the department.

Charleston, South Carolina, USA

My Ancestors’ Garden memorializes the port of entry for nearly half of all enslaved Africans brought to North America, where thousands of people were warehoused, sold, and many died. The landscape design for the International African American Museum exposes what had been erased—the former Gadsden’s Wharf location had never been marked—and now reveals truths that have been long obscured. The landscape design marks the watery terrain with the full-size outlines of bodies drawn in an abolitionists’ diagram of a packed slave ship and takes cues from "hush harbor" landscapes where enslaved Africans could meet freely and share stories and traditions from their homeland.

It is credited Water Feature Pavers: Courtesy of the International African American Museum.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Designing Peace.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/2318806285/ |title=Project, My Ancestors' Garden, 2022 |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=25 April 2024 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>