Black Tea Rhapsody: An Homage to African American Tea Culture is a research-based traveling public humanities exhibition and archival initiative examining African American tea culture through immersive installation, photography, sculpture, oral history, and material culture. examining African American tea culture as a living archive of memory, healing, community, and spiritual practice. Drawing from material culture, photography, sculpture, immersive installation, and documentary inquiry, the exhibition constructs environments where visitors inhabit — rather than merely observe — the social and sacred dimensions of Black domestic life across time.

Interdisciplinary in approach and modular in design, the exhibition is built for institutional travel across museums, libraries, and universities. It bridges contemporary art, sociology, African American studies, and public humanities to produce an experience that is intellectually rigorous, emotionally resonant, and culturally essential.

This work begins with objects: the chipped cup, the inherited saucer, the kettle passed down without ceremony. These are not decorations — they are documents. African American material culture carries within it a grammar of survival, sociality, and sacred practice that formal archives have long overlooked.

Through installation, I construct environments where visitors do not merely observe but inhabit. The domestic space becomes a stage for intergenerational storytelling — where the act of gathering over tea is understood as ceremony, as medicine, and as a form of communal knowledge-making that moves across time.

Black Tea Rhapsody is enriched by a distinguished network of scholars, artists, historians, entrepreneurs, spiritual leaders, and cultural practitioners whose expertise informs the exhibition's research, public programming, and community engagement. Together, these collaborators contribute to a multidisciplinary exploration of African American tea culture, demonstrating how everyday cultural practices preserve history, strengthen communities, and transmit knowledge across generations.

The exhibition's public programming may include artist talks, lectures, panel discussions, workshops, and community conversations featuring members of this advisory network, as well as local scholars and practitioners from host communities.

Public programming is customized for each host institution and may include:

Each room within Black Tea Rhapsody functions as a distinct atmospheric world — a curated environment where material, light, sound, and memory converge. Together, they form a continuous narrative of Black cultural life across time.

Black Tea Rhapsody is designed as a living public humanities platform — not merely an exhibition to be viewed, but a sustained environment for community engagement, scholarly exchange, and cultural celebration. The following programming is available to institutional partners.

Black Tea Rhapsody is an active traveling exhibition platform, designed for institutional presentation across museums, research libraries, HBCUs, and universities. The exhibition is modular, scalable, and adaptable to a range of institutional contexts and spatial configurations.

Select archival editions of the Black Tea Rhapsody Codex are currently being prepared for acquisition and long-term preservation within institutional collections.

The Codex documents the full scope of the exhibition — its research methodology, archival sources, material culture inventory, photographic documentation, and curatorial framework. Editions are intended for special collections, rare book rooms, and research libraries committed to preserving contemporary Black cultural production.

About the Exhibition

Black Tea Rhapsody: An Homage to African American Tea Culture is a multimedia exhibition and archival project by Dr. Rolanda JW Spencer examining African American tea culture through immersive installation, photography, sculpture, ritual, and material culture. Currently on view at the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta, GA, August 14 – December 4, 2026.

About the Artist

Dr. Rolanda JW Spencer is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Morehouse College and an Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership Innovation Lab Research Fellow. She holds an MFA, EdD, MA, and BA.

Black Tea Rhapsody is a scalable, modular exhibition designed for institutional travel. It has been presented at HBCUs, public libraries, and contemporary galleries — and is actively seeking museum, university, and library partners for its next presentations.

For venue inquiries, press access, curatorial collaboration, and traveling exhibition partnerships, please reach out directly.