Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific Exhibit

Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific explores the deep and often overlooked relationships between Black communities and the Pacific Ocean. Spanning centuries of maritime movement, labor, exploration, and cultural exchange, the exhibit highlights the lives and contributions of Black mariners whose stories helped shape the Pacific world.

Visitors are invited to discover the experiences of sailors, whalers, fishers, waterfront workers, explorers, soldiers, surfers, swimmers, and scholars whose connections to the ocean expanded far beyond traditional narratives of maritime history.

Through immersive storytelling, historical interpretation, and contemporary scholarship, the exhibit offers a broader and more inclusive understanding of the Pacific—revealing how identity, labor, migration, resilience, and culture moved across oceans and generations.

Developed in partnership with UC San Diego curator Dr. Caroline Collins, Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific brings together research, storytelling, and maritime history to explore Black relationships with the Pacific Ocean and the broader maritime world.

The exhibit invites visitors to reconsider familiar narratives of exploration, labor, and seafaring through stories that have too often remained outside traditional maritime histories.