ReImagine Lefferts

Prospect Park Alliance has launched ReImagine Lefferts, an initiative to re-envision the mission and programming of the Lefferts Historic House museum to focus its interpretation and programming on exploring the lives, resistance and resilience of the Indigenous people of Lenapehoking, whose unceded ancestral lands the park and house rests upon, and the Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family.

The Alliance seeks to engage the public in thoughtful dialogue about the legacy of enslavement and the exploitation of marginalized communities in Brooklyn and beyond. We are currently conducting scholarly research into the people who lived and worked the land in order to create programs and exhibits that bring together people of all ages and backgrounds around these challenging yet foundational histories of the borough.

To accomplish this work, the Alliance is collaborating with descendant and neighboring communities, culture bearers, scholars, artists, civic leaders and museum professionals  to create content that will support the museum’s new focus and deepen our relationships with these communities through active conversation and collaboration.

By centering the narratives at the museum on these legacies of dispossession, enslavement and oppression in Brooklyn, while also highlighting stories of resistance, resilience and joy, we seek to create a safe space for engaging with our collective past as well as contemporary issues affecting our community today.

Interested in Reimagine Lefferts? Share your opinions in our online questionnaire that will help us shape the museum’s future.

ReImagine Lefferts is funded through a Humanities in Place grant from the Mellon Foundation.