New York Public Library

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, part of the New York Public Library system, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

 To commemorate the closing of the exhibition Marking Time in the Age of Mass Incarceration at the Schomburg Center, three MacArthur Fellows engage on the effects of prisons.  Physician and researcher Emily Wang approaches these issues through long-term investigation of the medical impact of imprisonment; sociologist Reuben Jonathan Miller conducts ethnographic studies of the ways incarcerated people continue to be punished long after serving their sentence; and art historian and curator Nicole Fleetwood examines how incarcerated people use art and culture to resist the isolation and deprivation that prisons engender.

To inventory and make available collections on the history, culture, and experience of peoples of African descent.