The Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery (MSRCAS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in California 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 Black contemporary art.
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1115 E Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, California, USA 90021
Our physical location is coming in 2026!
Programming
Upcoming
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session V: Queer Desublimation and Trans Anarchitecture
Saturday, April 25 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Lee Edelman and Jack Halberstam
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session VI: Black Art & N’est Pas
Saturday, May 16 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Patrice Douglass, David Marriott, and Rizvana Bradley
Past
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session IV: Ab-sens, Lalangue, Pas-Tout: Art and (Self-)Ruin
Saturday, March 28 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Fred Moten and Éric Alliez
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session III: Masochism Beyond Sublimation
Saturday, March 14 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session II (b): Use of Symptoms
March 6 2026
1 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Luke Thurston, Ann Pellegrini, Avgi Saketopoulou
Link to Session Recordings
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session II (a): Use of Symptoms
Saturday, February 28 2026
12 pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Guest Speakers: Derek Hook, Marcus Coelen, and Jamieson Webster
Link to Session Recordings
Corrosive Sublimation: Art & Ab-sense, Session I: A Psychoanalytic Introduction to the Artist
Saturday January 31 2026
12pm EST
Facilitated by Dylan Lackey
Link to recording
Latent Space
An open conversation led by Boz Garden on the occasion of Coleman Collins’ exhibition at Ehrlich Steinberg
Wednesday October 29 2025
5:30pm
Location: 5540 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
The accompanying texts can be found here:
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, 1952
Teju Cole, Tremor, 2023
Book Talk for Patrice D. Douglass’s Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence; joined by Ebony Oldham and Jordan Mulkey
September 21st, 2025
Location: Zoom
Link to Recording
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.