HOW TO SUPPORT MSRCAS
Our Mission
As of August 2025, the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in California. As an interdisciplinary archive, our catalog will feature rich, curated research collections by scholars and artists who are key to understanding the cultural impacts of antiblackness and the afterlives of Atlantic slavery we endure today. MSRCAS aims to both preserve the intellectual and artistic work on Atlantic slavery and facilitate programs in which new thought can be produced outside the restrictions of the university.
Your generous donation directly supports our mission to cultivate research and steward materials that engage with the enduring legacies of Atlantic slavery. Contributions enable us to support a number of operations and make new acquisitions. This includes acquiring books, rare publications, and artistic materials that form the foundation of our interdisciplinary collection; public programming such as lectures, symposiums, workshops, exhibition walkthroughs, and artist talks; as well as the necessary tools, services, and software needed to help keep these materials available digitally as well as physically.
Ultimately, your gift is an investment in sustaining an essential site for Black study outside of standard institutional contexts, fostering deeper understandings of slavery’s relational and aesthetic afterlives and experimental methods of engagement for our community of artists and thinkers here in Los Angeles and abroad.
Visitor
$25 - $50
Sustains the day-to-day operations that keep MSRCAS accessible: the digital platforms that host the Center's online collections, the archival systems through which materials reach scholars and the public, and the administrative work of running a research center year-round.
Reader
$100 - $200
Contributes to MSRCAS's reading room and physical holdings — the books, rare publications, exhibition catalogs, artist publications, and archival materials that constitute the Center's interdisciplinary collection and make sustained research at the intersection of Black studies and contemporary art possible.
Witness
$500 - $1,000
Advances the Center's public programming which includes the seminars, lectures, artist talks, screenings, and reading groups through which MSRCAS convenes its community and makes the important work of Black study available through a dynamic set of resources.
Steward
$2,500
Strengthens MSRCAS's capacity to host larger gatherings — symposia, multi-day convenings, and visiting scholar engagements that bring artists, writers, and researchers into sustained conversation and expand the Center's institutional partnerships.
Founder
$5,000
Provides foundational support for MSRCAS's long-term institutional capacity, contributing to the development of research fellowships, the production of in-person programming across multiple seasons, and the durable infrastructure that allows the Center to grow into a site for independent Black study sustained outside the constraints of the university and the museum.
A donation of this amount can include the addition of your name on the wall at the physical Center in Downtown LA.
Donate Below
MSRCAS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Your contribution is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.