The Guardian newspaper and UC Berkeley News have published reviews of “Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain,” an exhibit curated by Professor Brandi T. Summers that navigates the braided histories of displacement, resistance, and resilience in Oakland and the East Bay.
Summers is an associate professor and director of Graduate Studies for the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University.
The exhibit opened July 18 and runs through March 1, 2026, at the Oakland Museum of California.
The Guardian story praises the exhibit: “Through the lenses of history, art, and architecture, Black Spaces: Reclaim and Remain explores patterns of displacement in the San Francisco East Bay as well as the resilience Black communities have shown despite being repeatedly pushed out of the homes and neighborhoods they have built – first from the racist deployment of policies like eminent domain and today through a housing affordability crisis that disproportionally affects communities of color.”
The story in UC Berkeley News described the exhibit as showing “how generations of Black Oakland communities faced waves of dispossession due in part to urban infrastructure projects that resulted in the demolition of their homes and community spaces. It also resists narrating this history’s end, continuously inviting the exhibit visitor to remember the past — through artifacts, maps, archival footage and images — in order to imagine the city’s future anew.”
