Launch of BMRC Black Visual Arts Survey and Digital Catalog

Over the past year, Visual Arts Researcher Rashieda Witter conducted an in-depth survey of collections held across BMRC member museums, libraries, and archives, searching for materials that illuminate Chicago’s rich Black art history.

The result is "To the Seeker After Truth: Amplifying Chicago’s Black Art History,” a digital catalog tracing more than 140 years of Black Creative Genius across the city.
Its title pays homage to Ida B. Wells’s 1893 preface “To the Seeker After Truth,” which exposed the erasure of Black Americans at the Chicago World’s Fair.

Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, this resource is designed to amplify visibility, support research, and spark new creative engagement with these collections.

For the best experience, explore the catalog on a desktop or laptop: To the Seeker After Truth: Amplifying Chicago's Black Art History | The Black Metropolis Research Consortium

Image Credit:
Emory Douglas, “Prints for the Black Panther Party,” c.1969. From the collection, “Black Activism, 1960s-1970s Social Movements Ephemera Collection, MS218. Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University”