Talib Kweli, Jordin Sparks, Lauren London and Lance Gross star as guest curators of The Kinsey Collection in The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey - Where Art and History Connect presented by Wells Fargo Bank and Bernard and Shirley Kinsey. The collection, which has been on a national tour since 2007, began after Bernard Kinsey came across a letter from Carrie Kinsey to President Theodore Roosevelt pleading for assistance in locating and freeing her brother who had been forced into peonage. The letter written in 1903 was included in the book Slavery By Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon, which deals with the informal forms of bondage introduced after the abolition of slavery in 1865. After doing a bit of research, Kinsey learned that Carrie Kinsey was a second cousin.
Building upon that legacy the Kinsey family began to amass one of the largest private collections of artifacts, documents and artwork spanning their 40-year marriage and tracing African-American history over a span of 400 years. The touring collection has been seen by over 3 million visitors at various museums. Wells Fargo has collaborated with the Kinsey family to bring the collection to life in a manner that surpasses the confines of the page or museum passageways by pairing familiar faces with the stories told in the collection - a move that will likely balloon public knowledge and curiosity about the information and items contained in the collection. The shorts narrated by the guest curators focus on different eras and aspects of African-American history that highlight some of the most important stories in the collection. Watch the videos below to experience a bit of The Kinsey Collection for yourself. Catch the Kinsey Collection exhibit out on tour at museums across the country. The collection will be showing at the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina until October 12th.
