History becomes unavoidable when an object survives.
What happens when a country takes physical evidence of its past and puts it inside a building devoted to freedom?
From the outside, it looked like just another neglected barn. But inside, the decaying structure on a Mason County, Ky., farm held a piece of history.
The cramped one-room jail tells the story of a generation of slaves who were kept inside the “slave pen” on Capt. John W. Anderson’s farm waiting to be taken to the auction block.
If not for the barn built around it, the central artifact in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center would have been lost to the elements.
The second floor houses the Freedom Center’s most important artifact, the Slave Pen. Originally from a Northern Kentucky farm and rebuilt in the Center, the pen is entered through a black-steel interpretation of a chimney that opens into the quarters where enslaved people were once held in transit to slave markets.
Visitors are struck by its starkness. Within this ultramodern, sophisticated building is a plain, unadorned cabin. The contrast gives the object its force: the museum surrounds it with interpretation, but the structure itself remains spare and physical.
From there, the museum broadens the history through artifacts, film, sound and architecture. Just beyond the pen is a 350-seat theater with a fiber-optic sky, where the audience can pick out constellations when the lights go down. The multimedia presentation Suite for Freedom introduces the rest of the museum.
After 10 years of planning, 27 months of construction and more than $100 million, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opened to the public. The 158,000-square-foot facility rose on the riverfront as a national institution devoted to the history of slavery and the continuing struggle for freedom.
For nearly two years, we watched it rise on the riverfront: craggy travertine stone from Italy, copper panels on the north and south sides, three pavilions connected by a glass bridge, and undulating contours that pay tribute to the Ohio River.
Inside, a predominantly off-white porcelain-tile wall is punctuated by copper pinwheels in a pattern that mimics stones in the river. “They sparkle like rivers sparkle,” Blackburn said. “As often as possible we have brought the exterior into the building.”
The travertine appears inside as well. Chosen for its physical characteristics, it is meant to convey permanence.
“We looked at the stones for buildings built by slaves,” says Blackburn. “But the color was cold and we didn’t want it to feel oppressive in the building. The story is not all about suffering. It’s about overcoming.”
Alpha Blackburn described the project as a chance to “give voice to a history too often silenced in denial.” She said the design was immersed in that purpose from the start.
Architecture established the civic scale of the Freedom Center. Inside it, artists and exhibit designers faced a more intimate question: how could history be given form without reducing it to spectacle?
The six bas-relief limestone panels, weighing nearly a ton, depict the story of a family escaping over the Ohio River into the Underground Railroad. Mounted on the stone wall of the Freedom Center’s third-floor terrace, the panels carry symbols and images of hope, courage and determination.
Cincinnati artist Karen Heyl carved the family’s story, using a pneumatic hammer and chisels to create panels for reflection after visitors have experienced the Center. “The image of the Ohio River meandering through the carvings is the thread that ties all the panels together,” Heyl said. “The imagery is a summary of recorded journeys.” Limestone, known for its strength and endurance, was the appropriate material to complement the Freedom Center’s message, she said.
“Most of my work is narrative in nature,” Heyl said. “I like viewers of my art to embark on a personal journey.” The Freedom Center, she said, would serve as “a reminder of our past and the need to continue to free all our citizens of the social, economic and educational shackles that still exist.”
If Heyl gave individual journeys physical form, Rob Morgan shaped the visitor’s encounter with the larger history. His team and Freedom Center staff spent months mapping the exhibits, gallery by gallery. As design director for the Freedom Center’s exhibits, Morgan faced what he called “a challenge taking the complex, painful history of slavery and oppression and making it accessible, while portraying it with truth and honesty.”
“We wanted to create an emotionally and intellectually balanced experience,” Morgan said. “We also wanted a balance of education and entertainment.” The experiences combined special effects and artistry. The largest exhibit, From Slavery to Freedom, covered almost 8,000 square feet and represented nearly 400 years of history.
“From the time you walk into the gallery, you are fully immersed in the experience,” Morgan said. In one gallery, visitors entered a 17th-century Caribbean port depicted through pastel-colored stucco buildings, presumably the homes of successful slave traders. In another section, The Struggle Today, a multimedia barrage catapulted visitors from the past into the present.
In the end, Morgan created more than 66 experiences, including media elements, the main theater and multicomponent displays. “I’m an armchair historian,” he said. “This project was important to me on a personal level. It is in my city.” He called it “a great opportunity for the city to have this museum of consciousness here.”
“We could have forgotten,” said Carl Westmoreland, curator and senior adviser to the Center. The Slave Pen survived. Moved from the Kentucky farm and rebuilt inside the Freedom Center, it remains what it was before it became an exhibit: physical evidence.