Exhibitions + Culture Sites
Recent Writing, Planning and Community Work with Museums, Historic Houses, and Sites of Memory
Dix Park
Raleigh, NC
Facilitator • Brocade Studio
The interpretive plan for the City of Raleigh and Dix Park Conservancy is based on data and stories we collected over two years of walking the park and holding community conversations about how the park’s layered history could and should be told.
Photo courtesy of Dorothea Dix Park
At the Vanguard: Making and Keeping History at HBCUs
National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC
writer • Word-Burning Stove
Word-Burning Stove is writing the script for a new exhibition about the prescience and innovation of archivists and collectors at HBCUs. At the Vanguard will tour after six months at NMAAHC.
North Carolina Museum of History
Raleigh, NC
Facilitator • Brocade Studio
Through seasons of community conversations, we elicited responses from North Carolinians who had been ignored or underserved by the state’s North Carolina Museum of History. The groups suggested how to tell their stories at the museum, and which stories to share.
Lewis Latimer House Museum
Flushing, NY
interpretive planner • Brocade Studio
In anticipation of his 175th birthday, Brocade honors Lewis Latimer — the inventor, electrical pioneer, autodidact, painter, poet, and son of enslaved parents who claimed their freedom. We created an interpretive plan then added editorial services for the museum's revised permanent exhibition that will amplify the legacy of Latimer and other inventors and creators of color. This center for STEAM education is located in Flushing, a vibrant and changing neighborhood.
Read the New York Times coverage
Burying Ground at University of Richmond
Richmond, VA
storyteller • Word-Burning Stove
The Burying Ground is a memorial to the unknown enslaved people buried at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Toni is collaborating with descendants, architects, artists, and historians to write a commissioned, poetic narrative for the memorial.
City of Hope
Script editor • word-burning stove
This will be no mere one-day march in Washington, but a trek to the nation’s capital by suffering and outraged citizens who will go to stay until some definite and positive action is taken to provide jobs and income for the poor.
— Martin Luther King Jr., press conference announcing the Poor People’s Campaign
December 4, 1967
For 43 days in 1968, demonstrators lived on Washington DC’s National Mall in a tent city known as Resurrection City. Smithsonian’s NMAAHC and SITES organized a traveling poster exhibition to honor Dr. King’s last mission for economic justice and opportunity.
Even More Work
Historic Jamestowne
Toni workshopped research findings in 17th c. Virginia history with African American community stakeholders in her work on the 26,500 sq. ft. permanent exhibitions at Jamestown. With her guidance, a national review team ensured cultural sensitivity on all interpretive plans, research methods, and content.
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National Civil Rights Museum
Historian Hasan Jeffries, Ph.D, and Toni worked together with Dr. Stephanie Shaw and the NCRM staff on a new exhibit script for the landmark museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
With the curatorial and content development team, Toni helped give shape and voice to the permanent "Cultural Expressions" exhibit for the Smithsonian museum.
Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Site
Toni completed exhibit text for the new Hangar Two exhibit at historic Moton Field in Alabama. The Tuskegee Airmen lived and trained at the site, moving what began as "the Tuskegee Experiment" forward into World War II and history as "the Tuskegee Experience."
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African Burial Ground National Monument and Historic Site
Toni's work as lead exhibit writer for the African Burial Ground Visitor Center garnered a 2010 text writing award from the American Association of Museums. Working with archaeologists and historians, Toni interpreted in writing the rediscovered history of the Africans who helped build New York. The cemetery is located in lower New York, near Wall Street.
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Old Slave Mart Museum
Toni wrote interpretive text and panels for a daring new history museum on the domestic slave trade in Charleston. She and the team of curators, city staff, and designers created an inclusive exhibition illuminating the slave market experience that took place at the site. The museum is celebrated for its unsentimental telling of the story of Ryan’s Mart from a variety of perspectives.
Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia
As advisor to the board, Toni is helping to shape the museum's new traveling and permanent exhibitions. BHM will open in the historic Leigh Street Armory in Richmond, Virginia.
Museum of Western Expansion—Gateway Arch
Toni's Word-Burning Stove LLC team is writing new exhibit text for the renovated museum at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis.
Scotchtown
Preservation Virginia staff identified the need to revise docent training at the former plantation home of statesman Patrick Henry, his family, and domestic and field workers. Toni shaped a more inclusive, culturally sensitive program, and met with community members about their connection to Scotchtown.