Black Atlas
Exhibition & Film
The Warburg Institute, 2025–26
Black Atlas is a major exhibition and moving-image essay commission from the Warburg’s Image of the Black archive, conceived and directed by Edward George and produced by Matthew Harle.
The project emerged from George’s year-long residency working on the collection—an archive of more than 30,000 images charting the representation of people of African descent in Western art, from antiquity to the 20th century. Founded in the Civil Rights era by Dominique and John de Menil, the archive is now split between the Warburg’s Photographic Collection in London and the Hutchins Center at Harvard.
Black Atlas marked the first time that images from the archive had been exhibited in the UK. At its centre is a 57-minute narrated film essay, a poetic thesis assembled from thousands of images selected from across the archive’s subjects and periods. Accompanying the film were carefully edited triptychs that reconfigured and changed over the duration of the exhibition.
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Exhibition & Film
The Warburg Institute, 2025–26
Black Atlas is a major exhibition and moving-image essay commission from the Warburg’s Image of the Black archive, conceived and directed by Edward George and produced by Matthew Harle.
The project emerged from George’s year-long residency working on the collection—an archive of more than 30,000 images charting the representation of people of African descent in Western art, from antiquity to the 20th century. Founded in the Civil Rights era by Dominique and John de Menil, the archive is now split between the Warburg’s Photographic Collection in London and the Hutchins Center at Harvard.
Black Atlas marked the first time that images from the archive had been exhibited in the UK. At its centre is a 57-minute narrated film essay, a poetic thesis assembled from thousands of images selected from across the archive’s subjects and periods. Accompanying the film were carefully edited triptychs that reconfigured and changed over the duration of the exhibition.
View Trailer
More information
