The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is literally making room for the real, lived history of Seneca Village, the once-thriving community founded by free Black New Yorkers that existed just a few hundred yards west of The Met between the 1820s and 1850s. The period rooms inside the museum have shown off furniture and delicate artifacts from Europe's Rococo era to American Federalist style, but now, they'll include a permanent room that represents Afrofuturism—the African and African diasporic belief that the past, present, and future are interconnected. The space, conceived and designed by Lead Curator and Designer Hannah Beachler (known for her work on Black Panther and Beyoncé’s "Lemonade" video) and Senior Exhibition Designer Fabiana Weinberg, includes a wood-framed 19th-century home that contains works from The Met’s American Wing that are reminiscent of pot shards and remnants from Seneca Village that were found in 2011. Representing the future with the past in mind, works of art and design from the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art are interspersed in the space as well as contemporary furniture, photography, and ceramics alongside from The Met’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Photograph: Anna-Marie Kellen, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art "Before Yesterday We Could Fly" also features recent acquisitions made specifically for the project, including works by Ini Archibong, Andile Dyalvane, Yinka Ilori, Cyrus Kabiru, Roberto Lugo, Chuma Maweni, Zizipho Poswa,...