Rutgers University–Newark has partnered with New Arts, a public arts studio at Express Newark, to present a citywide art exhibition featuring archival photographs of Newark in the 1980s created by the multidisciplinary artist Manuel Acevedo across the city’s five wards.
The exhibition will kick off with an opening program Tuesday, May 12, at 5:30 p.m. at 5 Linden Street in the Central Ward. Afterward, guests can attend a guided tour of installations throughout the city’s five wards, with transportation provided. The event will also include light refreshments and live music.
The Wards of Newark: Manuel Acevedo, which is located across each ward, will display his new images alongside older ones to capture a sense of continuity and Newark’s inherent beauty, value, and nuanced attitudes toward growth and change.
The images, captured between 1982 and 1987, reflect the city’s past vitality and current diversity, inviting viewers to remember the five wards of Newark — North, Central, East, West and South — as a place of home, community, and cosmopolitanism.
Curated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Rutgers–Newark professor Salamishah Tillet, director of New Arts at Rutgers and a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing and Africana Studies, Wards of Newark draws from an archive of more than 3,200 black-and-white images by Acevedo, most of which have never been shared with the public.