International African American Museum

The International African American Museum will preserve, interpret, and responsibly share a rare collection of nineteenth-century daguerreotypes and prioritize long-term preservation while expanding access through scholarship, digital resources, and educational programming. Project activities include creating an ethical interpretive framework, conservation documentation and collections care protocols for nineteenth-century daguerreotypes, conducting research on each individual and historical context of the photographs, generating high-resolution digital reproductions along with multimedia interpretation and expanded educational programming. Through conservation assessment, improved storage systems, environmental monitoring, and handling protocols, the museum will stabilize these objects and ensure their availability for future research and interpretation. The project aims to deepen knowledge and strengthen critical analysis among the museum’s primary audiences, including students, educators, scholars, and visitors, while establishing the daguerreotypes as historical records connected to human lives and ancestral histories that foster empathy, respect, and thoughtful engagement with the past.