The Gallery for Ghosts is a collaborative, creative space located in the attic of a c. 1698 former-tavern (now private home) in Norwichtown, Connecticut (1659). The house, “Antient Elm,” has a storied past, once owned by the Puritan diarist Sarah Kemble Knight, and continues as a living, historic site that was essential to both the childhood of Benedict Arnold and the American Revolution. Sometimes pictures on the walls turn by themselves.

While the mythological narrative of the house looms large as a physical plant of American nationalism and identity-formation, the presence of an attic bedroom leaves room for pause. This small, nondescript room in the eaves (approximately 12’ x 14’), certainly served as a bedroom for enslaved Africans for generations, as slavery was still practiced in Connecticut until 1848. In fact, the “Antient Burying Ground,” located behind the house, holds the unmarked graves of hundreds of Black Americans. Today, the room is reimagined as The Gallery for Ghosts, a private space only open to the public virtually, where the spectres of the forgotten, the oppressed, the enslaved and the indentured are invited to partake in curated works that would have been denied to them in their lifetimes. Visiting only virtually, mortal spectators are encouraged to engage in their own kind of haunting and invocation toward reparative, social justice.