The Student & Worker (Pop Up) Museum of Resistance & Joy is an instalation and protest co-created by Duke Students and Workers in Solidarity. The pop-up museum is envisioned as an ever-blooming testament to the connectivity of students and workers on campus and their vision for a university where all are treated with dignity.
This pop up museum was erected on Duke University’s Abele Quad starting March 28, 2016, by the collective efforts of the Duke and Durham community. It is fashioned largely from repurposed doors, old scraps of fabric and yarn, images from the Duke University Archives, and other miscellaneous items. Over 90% of the items used in the pop-up museum are repurposed , and the museum collects artifacts from staff, students, and community members for display.
A statement released at the museum opening reads:
All are welcome here to celebrate, learn about, and bear witness to the history of student/worker solidarity at Duke. In a moment when Duke’s plantation politics have revealed themselves in yet another rupture of violence, hostility, cover-ups, and intimidation, we ground ourselves in a tradition that is as strange, tangled, and wonderful as the stories each one of us carries. We come together full of love and hope and bravery. We come together exhausted and hopeful and proud of the world we are working to make.
As you spend a few minutes weaving ribbons or a few hours pouring through the archives, we hope you’ll join us in commemorating the deeply rooted tradition of campus activism by workers, community members, and students. As you stand or sit in Abele quad, look around at the Duke that has become familiar, and picture all that might exist in its place. Join us in imagining a world in which we remember our connectivity, in which violence is no longer commonplace, in which all of us are free. Now go create.
