Afro Charities builds bridges across generations and socioeconomic divides inspired by the AFRO American Newspapers’ archives.

Konsthall C welcomes Executive Director Savannah Woods from Afro Charities, a non-profit organization that manages the 130-year-old newspaper archive belonging to AFRO American Newspapers. Afro Charities produces artistic and educational projects inspired by the newspaper collection. The AFRO's collection is one of the best-preserved black newspaper archives in the United States, and includes approximately three million photographs, thousands of letters, rare audio recordings and other materials related to the publishing business. 

In 2022, AFRO will celebrate its 130th year of continuous publication. And the current exhibition at Konsthall C Nectar by Xaviera Simmon is created as part of Afro Charity's artistic and educational program. Afro Charities is currently developing an abandoned building in the heart of Old West Baltimore into a permanent home and research center for the AFRO Archives. Afro Charities works to ensure that future generations will have access to the important stories documented in the archive's collection.

Savannah Woods will tell the story of The AFRO, a newspaper that has been chronicling history through a Black lens since its founding in 1892. With editions across the Eastern seaboard, and European bureaus during World War II, the archives extend well beyond our home city of Baltimore. 

Savannah Wood is an artist and cultural organizer with deep roots in Baltimore and Los Angeles. Wood works primarily in photography, text and installation to explore spirituality, domesticity, and identity-formation, often in relation to place. She combines new and old works with found objects and archival documents to create unique, accumulative installations that privilege non-linear notions of time.

Major themes in her work include ancestral research, reframing land as a readable archive of historical activity, and reimagining humans as part of, rather than separate from, the natural world. Her projects reconnect people with the everyday beauty of our world and the histories that lie hidden just below its surface. 

https://www.afrocharities.org/