The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Menil Collection have co-commissioned the pioneering, London-based filmmaker and artist Sir John Akomfrah (born 1957) to create an immersive multichannel video installation, which will premiere at the BMA in November 2025 and the Menil in April 2026.

Multiple perspectives of young activists during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s are brought together in this installation to raise issues relating to memory and social change. Akomfrah constructs a conversation between past and present by creating a montage of archival footage, still photography, and newly filmed materials overlaid with an immersive sound design.

This installation will be screened during Museum hours through the run of the presentation. Celebrating the rich history of the Civil Rights era, accompanying programming and interpretation will highlight forgotten or unheard accounts of activists and campaigns in the Baltimore region, unearthing the global legacies of local actions.

John Akomfrah is a respected artist and filmmaker whose works are characterized by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, and the effects of time and aesthetics, and often explore the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982–1998), which started in London in 1982 with artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul. Lawson and Gopaul remain his collaborators today, alongside Ashitey Akomfrah, as Smoking Dogs Films (1998–present). John Akomfrah’s work has been shown in museums and exhibitions around the world, including Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Museum of Modern Art; the New Museum; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum; Centre Pompidou; Tate; and the British Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. Akomfrah was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2017 and a Knighthood for services to the Arts in the 2023 New Year Honours. The BMA honored him in 2024 as an Artist Who Inspires.