About the Project

National Dialogue and Traveling Exhibit

Principles

 

About the Project

The Guantánamo Public Memory Project seeks to build public awareness of the long history of the US naval station at Guantánamo, Bay, Cuba, and foster dialogue on the future of this place and the policies it shapes. The Project is developing a traveling exhibit, story collection, curricula, public dialogues, and research resource through collaboration with partners and debates with diverse stakeholders.

First launched in 2009 by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the Project is now developed by a growing collaboration of universities, organizations, and individuals, coordinated from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights.

National Dialogue and Traveling Exhibit

Opening at NYU’s Kimmel Center for University Life Windows Gallery December 13, 2012 and traveling to 9 sites (and counting) across the country through at least 2014, the exhibit will explore GTMO’s history from US occupation in 1898 to today’s debates and visions for its future. The exhibit is being developed through a unique collaboration among a growing number of universities as a dialogue among their students, communities, and people with first-hand experience at GTMO.

Universities across the country working with their students and communities to create the traveling exhibit, teach courses on GTMO, host public dialogues on how GTMO impacts on their community, and engage in national debate through the Project blog. University partners include:

• Arizona State University

• Brown University

• Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis

• The New School for Public Engagement

• New York University

• Rutgers University New Brunswick

• University of Massachusetts Amherst

• University of Miami

• University of Minnesota

• University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• University of California at Riverside

• University of West Florida

Exhibit Schedule

December 13 2012 – February 10 2013
Kimmel Windows Gallery, New York, NY

February 18 – March 29 2013
Douglas Library, Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ

April 8 – May 12 2013
Cultural Arts Gallery, Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis, IN

May 20 – Summer 2013
California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA

September 11 – October 9 2013
Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

October 16 – November 29 2013
Phoenix Public Library, Phoenix, AZ

December 6 2013 – January 2014
International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro, NC

February – March 2014
Minnesota History Center, St. Paul, MN

April – May 2014
Historic Pensacola Village, Pensacola, FL

Fall 2014
University of Rhode Island Feinstein Providence Campus Gallery, Providence, RI

Principles

 

The Project’s founding working group, with members from a variety of different disciplines and political perspectives, developed the following common principles:

Involve the entire history of the site, not only its recent use in the “War on Terror”, grounded in rigorous scholarship;

Include multiple voices and perspectives such as recent and past detainees, military personnel, Cuban workers, Third Country Nationals and others, aiming to restore the dignity of all as human beings with complex individual histories and backgrounds;

Raise questions about the present and the future – not only of the site, but of related policies and practices at sites around the world – and inspire open and ongoing public debate for societies everywhere about how to act on the lessons of GTMO;

Be international, and offer a space for organizations and individuals to contribute their resources and perspectives;

Focus on reaching people off the physical site, without precluding the possibility of an on-site history museum in the future.