ABOUT
The Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery (MSRCAS) is a unique, hybrid space dedicated to the collection, study, and presentation of materials that engage with the ongoing legacies of Atlantic slavery and antiblackness in the United States and abroad. Located in Los Angeles, MSRCAS operates as a reading room, viewing room, and archival resource that supports theoretical research, curatorial inquiry, and public programming related to the legacies of Atlantic slavery. With a focus on both historical and contemporary materials—including books, rare books, exhibition catalogs, artist publications, and a media library—MSRCAS serves as a site of interdisciplinary engagement at the intersection of Black studies and the contemporary art field. TEAM

Program Director
Boz Deseo Garden

Affiliated Faculty and Co-Director
Harrison K. Smith

Affiliated Faculty and Co-Director
Zenobia
DIRECTORY

 Catalog Index

Programming

Donate Ephemera

Contribute to the Funding Campaign

Our Accession Policy


The Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery collects materials of enduring
research and cultural value, including but not limited to:

• Published and unpublished texts in Black studies, Black Feminism, Literary Studies,
Film/Media Studies, Post/Colonial Studies, Queer Studies, Gender Studies, Slavery
studies, Political Theory, Affect Theory, Ecological Studies, Economics,
Psychoanalysis, Afropessimism, Art History, Cultural Theory, and Aesthetic
Philosophy that are relevant to contemporary and historical Black thought;

• Artist publications, zines, exhibition catalogs, and ephemera related to contemporary
art practices that engage the histories and aesthetics of slavery and antiblackness;

• Audio-visual materials including films, recorded lectures, interviews, sound works,
and music archives;

• Institutional documents, press releases, correspondence, and printed matter from

exhibitions, curatorial projects, or research initiatives responding to slavery’s global
aerlives;

• Donated or deposited personal papers, notes, or annotated works by artists, scholars,
and cultural workers whose research or practice contributes to the Center’s mission.

• Accessions may originate from artists, researchers, institutions, and independent
archives, or estates.

The Morning Star Research Center welcomes collaboration with other archives, libraries, and
cultural institutions with shared commitments to critical memory work, and to the ethical
handling of materials shaped by or in response to the historical trauma, displacement, and
loss incurred as a result of slavery’s representational and economic consequences.
In seeking to preserve these materials, the Center also recognizes that no archive is neutral,
and endeavors to remain transparent about the conditions under which its holdings are
acquired, organized, and made accessible.

To inquire about donating ephemera to MSRCAS, please email info@msresearchcenter.com with a proposal.