Welcome!
UPDATE from Memorial Project Co-Chairs: February 29, 2024 - 17:40EST
Thank you for responding to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative’s Memorial Project. We appreciate your interest and dedication to this important work. We are committed to engaging with the community to advance reparative efforts for those most impacted by the legacy of slavery.
After much discussion with various stakeholders, we will be accepting RFQ’s on a rolling basis to allow time for further community engagement. We will provide an update by May 31 on the final submission date for the RFQ. Thank you to those who have already submitted an RFQ. Please do not hesitate to email us with questions at legacyofslavery_memorial@harvard.edu.
On behalf of,
Dan Byers, co-chair, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project, and the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Tracy K. Smith, co-chair, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project, and professor of English and African and African American Studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute
***
This memorial project is a key component of the broader Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative which launched after Harvard University released the report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery in April 2022. That report exposed the interconnections between Harvard, slavery, and its legacies, revealing difficult truths about the University’s direct, financial, and intellectual ties to slavery. Harvard is committed to reckoning with these difficult truths. Underscoring this commitment is an endowment of $100 million, which will support this reparative work in perpetuity and transform the recommendations from the report into action.
The Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Memorial Project Committee invites artists, architects, designers, multi-disciplinary teams and other creators to express their interest in conceiving a site or sites on Harvard’s Cambridge campus for commemoration and reflection as well as for listening to and living with the University’s legacy of slavery.
We seek expressions of interest from those with investments of thought and practice in memorialization, ritual, community-building, history, and questions about the future. In particular, we are interested in creative visions that activate and make visible complex dynamics, such as: permanence and vitality; honor and rebuke; ecology and the built environment; institutional interest and the common good.
About the Selection Process:
- From the submissions solicited by this RFQ, ten to twenty semifinalists will be asked to provide further materials for review. From that group, four finalist artists/teams will be invited to submit proposals in the RFP stage.
- A $40,000 stipend will be provided to each of the four invited finalist projects to develop initial design concepts.
- Each of the four finalists will make two campus visits to engage with community stakeholders. The first visit will include a site visit and community listening sessions. The second visit will be an opportunity for finalists to share their proposal in a series of public gatherings and conversations.
Questions may be directed to LegacyofSlavery_Memorial@harvard.edu
Return to the Harvard University Vice Provost for Special Projects page.
Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery: Memorial Request for Qualifications
Welcome!
UPDATE from Memorial Project Co-Chairs: February 29, 2024 - 17:40EST
Thank you for responding to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative’s Memorial Project. We appreciate your interest and dedication to this important work. We are committed to engaging with the community to advance reparative efforts for those most impacted by the legacy of slavery.
After much discussion with various stakeholders, we will be accepting RFQ’s on a rolling basis to allow time for further community engagement. We will provide an update by May 31 on the final submission date for the RFQ. Thank you to those who have already submitted an RFQ. Please do not hesitate to email us with questions at legacyofslavery_memorial@harvard.edu.
On behalf of,
Dan Byers, co-chair, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project, and the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Tracy K. Smith, co-chair, the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project, and professor of English and African and African American Studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute
***
This memorial project is a key component of the broader Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative which launched after Harvard University released the report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery in April 2022. That report exposed the interconnections between Harvard, slavery, and its legacies, revealing difficult truths about the University’s direct, financial, and intellectual ties to slavery. Harvard is committed to reckoning with these difficult truths. Underscoring this commitment is an endowment of $100 million, which will support this reparative work in perpetuity and transform the recommendations from the report into action.
The Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Memorial Project Committee invites artists, architects, designers, multi-disciplinary teams and other creators to express their interest in conceiving a site or sites on Harvard’s Cambridge campus for commemoration and reflection as well as for listening to and living with the University’s legacy of slavery.
We seek expressions of interest from those with investments of thought and practice in memorialization, ritual, community-building, history, and questions about the future. In particular, we are interested in creative visions that activate and make visible complex dynamics, such as: permanence and vitality; honor and rebuke; ecology and the built environment; institutional interest and the common good.
About the Selection Process:
- From the submissions solicited by this RFQ, ten to twenty semifinalists will be asked to provide further materials for review. From that group, four finalist artists/teams will be invited to submit proposals in the RFP stage.
- A $40,000 stipend will be provided to each of the four invited finalist projects to develop initial design concepts.
- Each of the four finalists will make two campus visits to engage with community stakeholders. The first visit will include a site visit and community listening sessions. The second visit will be an opportunity for finalists to share their proposal in a series of public gatherings and conversations.
Questions may be directed to LegacyofSlavery_Memorial@harvard.edu
Return to the Harvard University Vice Provost for Special Projects page.