FREE Gallery Talk: February 8, 2:00pm-3:30pm

In this immersive exhibition, strikeWare Collective weaves traditional and new media to present a visual experience about the institutions, educators and progenitors who shaped how Baltimore’s Black community acquired formal training and knowledge.

The exhibition examines Black education in Baltimore from the essential role of churches such as Bethel AME in the antebellum era to the first public schools available to Black students after the Civil War. RENOVATIONS uses the Peale Center building, known historically as “Male and Female Colored School Number 1” to begin to look at the Black experience in Baltimore throughout history. In addition to a critical examination of historical and contemporary segregation in Baltimore City public schools, the show tracks the nine students who graduated from School Number 1 in 1889 – Baltimore’s first all-Black high school graduating class.