Regarding the Slavery Matter explores the traces and omissions of enslavement history in Beacon, NY. The works focus on specific sites in Beacon: the Brett Homestead, the former Matteawan Company clothing mill, Dennings Point, and 12 city intersections formed by streets that bear the names of enslaving families. The work will be presented in a two-person show at BAU Gallery in Beacon with New York-based interdisciplinary artist Elvira Clayton. On view November 13 through December 6, 2026.

Enslavement and its related economy were central to the development of New York State, from Long Island up through the Hudson Valley. In the 1790 U.S. Census, 10 percent of Dutchess County families reported enslaving people, including the Brett, Schenck, Phillips, and Van Kleeck families. Other families memorialized in Beacon also enslaved people on their properties, including Denning, DePeyster, Rombout, and Verplanck.

Yet the history of enslavement remains largely out of sight in Beacon. The Brett Homestead, for example, has many outdoor plaques and memorials; none mentions the people enslaved there. In fact, the exhibition title comes from the response of a local historian asked about enslavement at the Brett Homestead: “Unfortunately, the Homestead does not have any more information regarding the slavery matter than can be found available online.” Through photography, sculpture, and historical texts, Regarding the Slavery Matter attempts to address this gap and spark dialogue about historical erasure and the mechanisms of public recollection.

The woods surrounding the Homestead are the subject of the monochrome photographs. These images and a grid of color photographs documenting Beacon intersections that bear the names of enslaving families are all accompanied by related historical texts. While the landscapes feature deep shadows and selective focus, Kimmerling says, “the intersections have a matter-of-fact look that hints at how the history of enslavement can be so embedded into the everyday as to become unremarkable, a kind of collective forgetting.” To counter this, I worked with Catskill Castings to create cast-aluminum roadside markers for the Brett Homestead, Dennings Point, and the Matteawan Company, detailing the sites’ relationship to enslavement.

Elvira Clayton’s textile-based sculptures reflect on the lives of three people enslaved at the Homestead: “Molly,” “Old Negro Sam,” and “Coban,” each passed to Brett’s heirs in her will. The sculptures are handwoven and stitched using osnaburg (a textile historically used to clothe enslaved people), historical texts, glass beads, and other embellishments to create a spiritual language of honor and care. Her companion quilted piece responds to the Matteawan Company’s manufacture of “slave cloth,” blending regional wool with cotton produced by enslaved people in the South then sold to plantation owners to clothe enslaved bodies. Says Clayton, “An imperfect circle in the work traces this circuit—enslaved labor, cotton, Northern manufacture, cloth, enslaved body—while archival text, images, wool, cotton, and handwoven elements bring fragments of that history into physical relationship.”