To the Seeker After Truth: Amplifying Chicago's Black Art History, Page 3

The following resource documents Black visual arts collections across more than 20 BMRC member institutions. Based on a survey conducted by Rashieda Witter, BMRC Visual Arts Researcher from Nov. 2024–Nov. 2025, it provides collection descriptions, scope, strengths, gaps, and access notes, while highlighting connections among artists and institutions. Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, this resource is intended to amplify visibility, foster research, and encourage creative engagement with these collections.

This resource is best explored on a desktop or laptop for full accessibility. It is organized alphabetically by the name of our member institutions. A pdf of the full survey findings can be downloaded here: To the Seeker After Truth: Amplifying Chicago's Black Art History

Rebuild Foundation

Johnson Publishing Company Collection

The Johnson Publishing Company Collection is an archive of nearly 12,000 volumes of books and periodicals, accompanied by the archive of images, furnishings, artworks and ephemera once housed at the Johnson Publishing Company headquarters on Michigan Avenue. Donated by Linda Johnson Rice and the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC), publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, this collection, installed in a custom library designed by Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank, once served as the reference and research library for the editors of Negro Digest, Ebony and Jet Magazine from the 1940s to the present day. Today, Gates and Rebuild activate this collection through public readings of the texts, artistic and scholarly commissions, as well as the ongoing cataloguing of every single volume in this collection with the support of local librarians and historians.

Ana and Edward J. Williams Collection

The Ana and Edward J. Williams Collection is a collection comprised of approximately 4,000 objects of “negrobilia” that make use of harmful and racist images of Black people over the course of the history of the United States. Williams, a Chinese Jamaican banker in Chicago, began collecting these items 30 years ago to remove their offensive imagery from public circulation. What started as an altruistic personal act has grown into a collection of objects and images that now serves as a reminder of history and a catalyst for ongoing examination. Gates, with support of local archivists trained in Black studies, have completely archived and catalogued this collection. The collection will move from the Stony Island Arts Bank to The Land School, Rebuilds forthcoming project at the former St. Laurence Elementary School.

University of Chicago Glass Lantern Slides

Consisting of 72,225 glass lantern slides, this collection represents a vast history of visual information acquired from the University of Chicago’s Art History department. The slides depict visual documents of artworks, buildings, monuments, and architectural renderings from the Paleolithic era to modern times, in some cases evidencing objects and places which no longer physically exist.

Now completely digitized by Rebuild, the glass lantern slides offer an important story, not about what in contained in the archive, but namely, evidencing what is missing. In over 70,000 slides of art historical pedagogy taught in esteemed educational institutions for decades, less than 600 slides represent art from the African content or by descendants of the diaspora.

Shorefront Legacy

Archie Motley Papers

This collection includes books, personal correspondence, interviews, writings, professional files, research files, personal business records, ephemera, printed material, and artwork from Archie Motley III, former Archivist at the Chicago History Museum.

South Side Community Art Center

A collection list for this institution will be available at a later date.