A new exhibit highlighting Black contributions in coding to America is opening at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture next week.
Created in partnership with The Kitchen, one of New York City’s oldest nonprofit alternative art centers, the exhibit is entitled “Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art.” The name of the exhibit comes from André L. Brock’s “Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (2020).”
According the the New York Public Library, “Code Switch” takes a look at the relationship between Black cultural production and the legacy of computation as a mode of machinic engagement and creative inspiration. The collection will feature W.E.B. Du Bois’s 20th century hand-drawn charts and graphs and the labor of Black “computers” or human programmers who contributed to advancing programming, engineering and coding. Those who will be highlighted in the exhibition include Evelyn Boyd Granville, Dorothy Vaughan, Creola Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Annie Easley, Gladys West, and Clarence “Skip” Ellis.
The exhibit will open at 6 p.m. on Oct. 15 and will run through Dec. 19. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is located at 515 Malcolm X Blvd.
For more information, visit the New York Public Library website.
