Framing Freedom: Conversation with Makeda Best

Black in Boston and Beyond

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Makeda Best. Williams is the current director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston and Best is the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum of California where she overseas the curatorial collections and production departments. She was formerly a curator and head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at Harvard Art Museums. Some of her exhibitions include Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America and Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970. Best is also a writer, historian and author and the current curator of Framing Freedom: The Harriet Hayden Albums that recently opened at the Boston Athenaeum. Hayden was a 19th century Beacon Hill based abolitionist and social justice advocate. She was also a collector of photo albums that were given to her by prominent Bostonians. These albums that tell us about Black abolitionists, their public identities, and private lives are the subject of this exhibit and the focus of the conversation in this show. The focus of this exhibit is on two photo albums in particular owned by Harriet Hayden that contain 87 cartes-de-visite (small portrait photograph mounted on a piece of card) that help to tell us about Black material culture, social activism, and the daily lives of key figures in the abolitionist movement in Boston. For more information on the Framing Freedom exhibit click here: Harriet Hayden Albums