Philadelphia Woman Turns Home Into Museum Honoring Black Women

Vashti Dubois has transformed her Philadelphia home into a museum dedicated to black women.

The 56-year-old Dubois turned her house into The Colored Girls Museum three years ago because of the lack of images of black girls and women in museums and art galleries. What initially began in one room of her home, Dubois' bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and her son's bedroom are now art galleries.

"There are a lot of museums about a lot of different things, so we thought there should be one about the colored girl because there are no places that look at their experiences," Dubois said in an interview Metro News. "We want to show who she is in her day-to-day life as a sister, a lover, a friend, an artist, a victim. We want to show that if there were no colored girls, the system would collapse."

The museum is made up of artifacts, paintings, dolls, textiles, and sculptures from artists that Dubois knows personally, as well as those that have contacted her to contribute to the museum. Some artists even take over rooms and spaces for art installations. The museum encompasses everything from themed exhibitions to displays such as "The Birmingham Girls," which honors the four black girls killed by a Ku Klux Klan bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

"Colored girls are an important part of the universe," Dubois said. "You see us walking down the street. Everyday colored girls. You walk past us, but here we are in all of our extraordinary splendor doing the things that we do to make this world a great place to live."

The museum is open on Sundays. More information about it can be found here.

Source: metro.co.uk