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
brocade studio
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.
Photo courtesy of National Museum of African American History and Culture
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.
Photo courtesy of North Carolina Museum of History
Lewis Latimer House Museum
Flushing, NY
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
Brocade Studio
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.
Rendering courtesy of Baskervill
Recent Published Work
“50 years later, St. Louis’s Gateway Arch emerges with a new name and a skeptical view of western expansion”: The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott on the Museum at the Gateway Arch
"A Burial Ground and Its Dead Are Given Life"
2010 New York Times review of African Burial Ground in NYC."From Slave Ship Shackles to the Mountaintop"
New York Times' Ed Rothstein on the renovated National Civil Rights Museum“Meeting Lucinda”
New York Times, 36 Hours in Charleston, SC - mention of Old Slave Mart Museum.“Seeing Old Things Newly”
Museum professional Scott Callan's thoughts on the Old Slave Mart Museum“Carver [ON] Record, A Mini-Museum for Civil Rights”
Chester, Virginia high school combines art and civil rights"Toward a STEM + Arts Curriculum: Creating the Teacher Team"
STEAM article, now grad curriculum at RISD, written with Juliette Harris for Art Education