A Day in the Life of Seneca Village: We Wore More than Shackles, Sara Bunn

Bunn’s installation reimagines figures from Seneca Village, one of the largest communities of freed slaves living in New York during the 19th century. Seneca Village was settled in the 1820s in the middle of Manhattan Island, shortly before slavery was abolished in New York. Bunn depicts several of the community’s female property owners. These are the first emancipated or born free African American landowners of record in 1827 in New York. Their elaborate Victorian costumes, with puffed sleeves and crinoline skirts, represent their social and economic status, and the colorful and densely patterned Kente cloth individualizes each figure. Bunn claims that presenting these figures in fashionable and bold clothing “helps balance the negative images of the downtrodden [and] enslaved that permeate our history school books.” Seneca Village was destroyed in 1857 to make way for Central Park.