This summer, FOR-SITE presents its highly anticipated new project Black Gold: Stories Untold. This innovative exhibition invites more than fifteen contemporary artists to reflect on the resilience, struggles, and triumphs of African Americans who lived in California from the Gold Rush to the Reconstruction period following the Civil War (c. 1849–1877). Black Gold will be presented at Fort Point National Historic Site, the only extant Civil War-era fort on the West Coast of the United States, and will be on view from June 6 to November 2, 2025.

Through a selection of recent artworks and nearly a dozen new commissions, Black Gold highlights important but little-known figures and narratives from California’s history. Works in the exhibition explore the presence of slavery and the struggle for legal rights within this free state, the successes of Black entrepreneurs, and the experiences of African American Army regiments known as the Buffalo Soldiers. More broadly, the exhibition illuminates the role that Black communities played in the cultural, social, and political environs of the time. Artists include Akea Brionne, Demetri Broxton, Adrian L. Burrell, Adam Davis, Cheryl Derricotte, Carla Edwards, Mildred Howard, Sir Isaac Julien CBE, Tiff Massey, Umar Rashid, Trina M. Robinson, Alison Saar, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Bryan Keith Thomas, Cosmo Whyte, Hank Willis Thomas, and the artists of Creativity Explored.

Highlights include San Francisco artist Trina M. Robinson’s newly commissioned 16mm film, which tells the story of Brigadier General Charles Young (1864–1922), who was born enslaved and went on to lead a company of Buffalo Soldiers in San Francisco’s Presidio before becoming the first Black U.S. National Park Superintendent; British artist Yinka Shonibare’s large-scale sculptural installation Man Moving Up (2022), which embodies the struggle for economic and social ascent encountered by Black Americans migrating from the rural South to the North, following the Civil War and during the Great Migration; Oakland artist Demetri Broxton’s dazzling beaded portraits celebrating Black whaling ship captain and Bay Area civic leader William T. Shorey (1859–1919) and his family, which are embellished with cowrey shells of a type once used for protection by the Yoruba people of Nigeria and for the purchase of humans during the Transatlantic Slave Trade; and the work of interdisciplinary, Tulsa-based artist Adam Davis, who will create new tintype portraits during the run of the exhibition, linking past and present through an early photographic format popular among Civil War soldiers.

An exhibition catalogue from Radius Books will bring together newly commissioned texts and archival materials to foster a deeper understanding of the participating artists’ practices and the conditions facing Black Californians during the state’s early years.

To encourage dialogue about the exhibition’s multilayered themes, Black Gold will provide a team of docents positioned throughout the venue to offer background on the artworks and the history of Fort Point. FOR-SITE will also invite visitors to delve deeper into the exhibition online and interact through social media via the Instagram account @for_site and the hashtags #BlackGoldArt and #ArtAboutPlace. Additional facets of the show will be shared on FOR-SITE’s website, making aspects of Black Gold accessible to remote audiences.

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