The Global Curatorial Project: Unfinished Conversations records and oral histories is an archival collection of oral histories gathered as part of the larger Global Curatorial Project which also includes a traveling exhibition using materials from the collection, known as In Slavery’s Wake. The available files are the interview materials of over 143 project participants and 9 curators who provide testimonies to living in the wake of racial slavery and reflections on how it has shaped the modern world. Each participant has a recording(s), a transcript in the original language of the interview, a translation(s), and a summary of the interview provided by student researchers with the goal of assisting the curatorial team in identifying themes for the traveling exhibition. Some participants have multiple parts or two phases of interviews and each item is labeled to reflect that. The interviews are grouped into series based on filming location, except the curators who were filmed in multiple locations and are meant to give context to the history and development of the Global Curatorial Project.

These interviews come from communities in 8 different countries including: Africatown, Alabama, USA; Brussels, Belgium; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo; Kingston, Jamaica; Liverpool, UK; Saint-Louis and Dakar, Senegal; and Cape Town, South Africa. Funding for this project was provided by the Abrams Family Foundation, and the partner institutions responsible for this project include the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the International Slavery Museum, Museum of Samba, the Laboratory of Oral History and Images (LABHOI) at Fluminense Federal University, Programa Rio, Memória e Ação, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Iziko Museums of South Africa, Research Unit of Cultural Engineering and Anthropology (URICA) at University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar.