Un Covering and Re Covering the African Burial Ground: Memorial and Museum
This proposal for museum and memorial for the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan marks this invisible space where African peoples and slaves were buried beginning in the 17th century at the margins of Dutch colonial New York. The burial site was unearthed in 1991 when preparing the ground for a new 34 story federal office tower. Bones of the African people buried, and artifacts were re-interred into a folded glass surface. This glass surface marks the extent of the burial grounds. It spans across the sidewalks, folds up to create a space for reburial and mark this once invisible place in the city of Manhattan. The museum representing the secular is a slice of ground pulled up and holds the program of the museum that has viewing areas into a glass enclosed space that is the sacred burial area. This, folded glass patterned surface represents the traditional offering of a textile to re-cover the site to make it sacred again.