Transatlantic Slave Trade

This collection focuses on commemorative works dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, between ten million and twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. The Middle Passage refers to the Atlantic route between Africa and the Americas that was part of the transatlantic slave trade. Historians believe that between 15 and 25 percent of the enslaved Africans perished aboard the overcrowded, unsanitary slave ships.

The works in this thematic group address the violence and trauma of the transatlantic slave trade in various ways. Monuments such as The Ark of Return on the grounds of the United Nations in New York City, and The Middle Passage Monument in St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands, use abstraction to commemorate the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. Other memorials such as Kumbukumbu Ya Historia Ya Watumwa in Stone Town, Zanzibar, and the Atorkor Slave-Trade Memorial (Atorkor, Ghana), use figuration to evoke human presence.

Memorialization efforts from Senegal to present-day Nigeria are tied to The Slave Route Project run by UNESCO. Launched in 1994 in Ouidah, Benin, the Slave Route Project has three primary objectives:

• Contribute to a better understanding of the causes, forms of operation, stakes and consequences of slavery in the world (Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Middle East and Asia).
• Highlight the global transformations and cultural interactions that have resulted from this history.
• Contribute to a culture of peace by promoting reflection on inclusion, cultural pluralism, intercultural dialogue and the construction of new identities and citizenships. (See https://en.unesco.org/themes/fostering-rights-inclusion/slave-route#isc)

One way that The Slave Route Project fulfills its mission is to engage in "the preservation and promotion of sites and itineraries of memory related to the slave trade and slavery."

Updated January 26, 2026