Black Gold: Stories Untold — Fort Point’s Exhibition of Forgotten Histories
Fort Point has transformed into an immersive exhibition reclaiming buried narratives and honoring the contributions, struggles, and resilience of Black individuals during California’s early statehood. Curated by FOR-SITE’s Cheryl Haines, Black Gold: Stories Untold sheds light on long-overlooked stories of African Americans in California through contemporary art.
“Fort Point is not merely a historic backdrop. It is a partner, an experience. It brings visitors back to a moment in time when some of the people depicted in this exhibition lived. — Cheryl Haines, Chief Curator, For-Site.
The show features work from 17 artists, including Bay Area creatives like Adrian L. Burrell, Trina Michelle Robinson, and Mildred Howard, alongside national and international artists like Detroit’s Tiff Massey and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA from the UK.
“I first recognized how underrepresented Black history is in California after meeting a Buffalo Soldier in 2007,” Haines explains. Her research led her to the ACLU of Northern California’s Gold Chains project, and she uncovered a powerful, largely untold narrative. “It became clear that this material warranted a significant, large-scale exhibition.”
Buffalo Soldiers feature prominently in the exhibition. One of the first exhibits I saw at the June 7 public opening was Trina Michelle Robinson’s film, Transposing Landscapes: A Requiem for Charles Young. The film chronicles the life of Brigadier General Charles Young (1864–1922), born into slavery and later turned Buffalo Soldier, musician, and the first Black superintendent of a U.S. National Park (Sequoia).
“I approached the legacy of Charles Young through our shared Kentucky roots, Robinson says. Visiting the cabin where he was enslaved drew her in. She chose 16mm film to evoke memory and give weight to overlooked details. “There’s a tension with using film in that way, and that is what I think is interesting.”
One of Young’s piano compositions weaves through the film. “The piano and ocean scenes are meant to be the moments of alchemy—where he is able to access his brilliance and soothe his soul.”
Cosmo Whyte also honors Buffalo Soldiers with a curtain of hand-painted steel beads, depicting a historical photograph of two anonymous soldiers. The piece is interactive: Whyte intends for people to walk through the curtain to grasp the weight of the soldiers’ experience through the heaviness of the beads.
As I meandered through the third floor of Fort Point, three towering figures, draped in vivid red, stopped me cold. The installation, part of Mildred Howard‘s series Untold Histories / Hidden Truths, showcases statues of Peter Burnett, William Gwin, and Francis Scott Key, poignant reminders of our nation’s white supremacist legacies.
Howard’s installation asks, “What do we remember?” While it reminds us of what our history has erased, demanding that we reckon with the legacy of injustice etched into our civic spaces.
Walking down the brick-layered hall, I stepped into Heirloom Gilded Box by Bryan Keith Thomas. The room was filled with carved wood, curios, and relics. “The antiquity of the space was exciting to have a dialogue with,” Thomas told the crowd. “The scars on the floor, the architecture—they bear witness. They have their own frequency.”
I asked Thomas what he wants people to take away from his installation at Black Gold: Stories Untold. He replied, “I want people to think about the power of gold the same way they think about light and a sunset. Gold is not about money, necessarily; it’s about the thing that stays brilliant, it’s about what reflects light.”
He says:, “The items collected in the room had a presence during the Gold Rush era. The items lived in the 19th century and hold the ancestral presence of that time period.” After walking around his installation, I felt what he meant. The items held people, places, and events. Every surface was thick with history.
A cluster of eggs sat on display, representing “hope for the future…a cocoon, a seed, energetic forces that produce abundance,” according to Thomas.
Many objects in the room belonged to Black individuals, he notes. “They are, within all of their ethnicity, a part of the American Black repatriation of artifacts… many of the African items came from old money, white estates.”
Downstairs, Yinka Shonibare’s Man Moving Up depicts a globe-headed figure climbing stairs with a heavy suitcase, embodying the weight and ambition of Black Americans during the Great Migration and the period after the Civil War.
The public opening was brought to life by powerful live performances of actors portraying historical Black figures. Memorable acts include Sam Ademola as George Washington Dennis, Edris Cooper as Mary Ellen Pleasant, and Courtney Williams as Victoria Ann Shorey, one of the first African American female whalers in San Francisco.
Hannah Mayree, co-founder and creative director the Black Banjo Reclamation Project closed the June 7 event by interpreting several artworks beautifully through live performance.
“I spent time learning about the artists, their pieces, and the subjects they focused on,” says Mayree. Each work required me to piece together a continuing conversation and story that was being told at the Fort.”
Mayree told me, “[The banjo has] a history that had been obscured by racism, minstrelsy and slavery. The banjo is a relative and a descendant of lite gourd instruments such as the Akonting from West Africa. As a musician, it has been important for me to express myself with the banjo by writing original music as well as learning historical works on the banjo that I can bring to life in today’s time.”
They continue, “My musical repertoire is filled with Black songs. So when I am asked to respond to revolutionary leaders such as Fredrick Douglas, there are songs that come to mind in a powerful way that inspires me to keep telling important stories that need to be told through music. It feels good to be seen, to bring awareness to Black strength and struggle, to bring our voices together in song where there was once a war machine ready to defend and fight.”
Black Gold: Stories Untold runs at Fort Point through November 2, 2025.
Want to support the exhibition? Curator Cheryl Haines says she needs more volunteer docents to keep the show going. Sign up here.
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