Slavery Trails: Artist Marcus Brown Unveils Augmented Reality Memorials to Enslavement Across New York City

Image courtesy of the artist

On Friday, July 25, 2025, acclaimed New Orleans-based artist Marcus Brown will unveil four new interactive Augmented Reality (AR) sculpture installations across New York City. These exhibitions are part of Slavery Trails, a national public art initiative that transforms historical sites into immersive memorials to the legacy of slavery in the United States. The exhibits are presented in partnership with NYC Parks as part of the Art in the Parks program.

Slavery Trails is a musically interactive, augmented reality series rooted in historical research. Each installation overlays virtual sculpture and sound onto real-world locations tied to the history of slavery. The project creates a decentralized, participatory memorial that centers the lives and resistance of the enslaved.

Exhibition Dates:

• On view: July 25, 2025 – July 24, 2026
• Admission: Free and accessible via mobile device
• Presented by: NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks Program

Installation Locations & Titles:

City Hall Park, Manhattan

• The Slave Market: Wall Street
• New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741

Bush Terminal Park, Brooklyn

• American Gold III

Astoria Park, Queens

• American Gold IV

About the Works

The Slave Market: Wall Street

This AR sculpture reconstructs the 1711 New York slave market where enslaved Africans and Native Americans were bought and sold. Brown’s virtual sculpture restores presence to those erased from the public memory of the Financial District.

New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741

This piece reflects on one of the darkest and most misunderstood moments in New York’s colonial history. In the wake of mysterious fires, mass hysteria led to the execution of 30 people and the exile of dozens more—primarily Black and enslaved New Yorkers—on little evidence.

American Gold III & IV

Set aboard ghostly slave ships, these installations use augmented reality to immerse viewers in the experience of the Middle Passage. The golden forms of enslaved figures are suspended above viewers, transforming the brutality of commodification into a haunting, sacred memorial.

“American shipowners, merchants, seamen, and corrupt officials—based largely in New York City—collaborated with foreign allies to continue shipping captive Africans via the Middle Passage into the 1860s.” — John Harris

Through these installations, Marcus Brown seeks to merge technology, music, and history into public memory spaces that honor the enslaved and challenge contemporary narratives.

About the Artist:

A native of New Orleans, Marcus Brown is a sculptor, painter, inventor, musician, and educator. Brown holds a M.Ed. from Portland State University and BFA from Kansas City Institute of Art (KCAI) in Missouri. His work is expansive and includes national and international exhibits and performances in New York City, Berlin, Germany, and Krakow, Poland, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, McKenna Art Gallery, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, to name a few. 

Brown currently has public sculptures in Biloxi, Mississippi (Human Universal Musical Sound [HUMS]) and The New Leaf on St. Bernard Ave., St. Peter Claver and Henriette Delille at St. Peter Claver School in New Orleans. He also has sound sculptures at JAMNOLA and recently developed a public piece for interactive display at the 2022 New Orleans French Quarter Festival.

Mentors like the late Lin Emery, John T. Scott, and Jim Leedy, collectively instilled in Brown the importance of always learning and experimenting to create your own path.  In that vein, Brown developed a form of painting called Electro-sonic Painting in which the artist paints with sound/data producing instruments. He has performed with his invention in several venues both locally and nationally. In addition to his performance art, Brown has exhibited with artists such as Andy Warhol, Chris Burden, Hannah Wilke, and others around the world.

Brown is currently combining a new form of creative storytelling using Augmented Reality (AR) sculptures with interactive multimedia elements. His latest project, Passage, is a geotagged musically interactive augmented reality (AR) sculpture installation series based on slave ships and enslaved peoples.