See Changing Landscapes and Purchased Lives in Alexandria

The stories of enslaved African Americans continue to resound with contemporary audiences through depictions in film, new scholarly research, and the work of visual artists. This summer, the Alexandria Museum of Art offers a provocative look at the history and geography of slavery in central Louisiana with Then & Now, a dual exhibition running June 3-August 20.

Changing Landscapes: Photographs along the Solomon Northup Trail, by Jan Beauboeuf, features sites along the trail described by Northup in the narrative Twelve Years a Slave. The exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the LEH.

First displayed in New Orleans in 2015, The Historic New Orleans Collection’s (THNOC) Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865 explores history from the abolition of the international slave trade in 1808 to the close of the Civil War. Presented by Entergy Corporation with additional support from the National Park Service, the exhibition will travel to 10 Louisiana communities in 2016-2018. The tour will begin in November 2016 at the Cane River National Heritage Park.

Confirmed host sites also include: Creole National Historical Park in Natchitoches, the Bayou Teche Museum in New Iberia, the West Baton Rouge Museum, the Pointe Coupee Library in New Roads, the St. Tammany Parish Library in Slidell, City Hall in Bunkie, Caddo Parish Library in Shreveport, Cameron Parish Library in Lake Charles, and Nicholls State University in Thibodaux.

Visit www.themuseum.org and www.leh.org/purchased-lives/ for more information.