Migration, Exodus & Dance Heritage Walk at Kingsborough Houses in Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Photography by Anna Dave

The permanent artwork and community art installation led by artists Ifeoma Ebo and Jerome Haferd celebrates the Great Migration and Richmond Barthé’s iconic frieze and the living histories of Kingsborough residents

The heritage walk – composed of 35 artworks – marks the second phase of the broader cultural initiative that began with the landmark restoration of the Exodus and Dance frieze

The Public Housing Community Fund, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), Mellon Foundation, Kingsborough Houses residents, and design teams led by New York City-based artists Jerome Haferd and Ifeoma Ebo, came together on Friday, December 5th to celebrate and unveil Migration, a permanent installation and heritage walk at NYCHA’s Kingsborough Houses in Crown Heights. The artwork features 35 six- to 12-foot-high steel illuminated public art structures distributed throughout the 16-acre campus, honoring the recently restored monumental frieze, Exodus and Dance, by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Richmond Barthé. The installation features and amplifies the voices, memories, and aspirations of the Kingsborough residents and community. Migration is a place-based, interpretive public artwork that blends historic preservation with storytelling.

Migration is the second phase of an initiative that kicked off with the restoration of the Exodus and Dance frieze at the Kingsborough Houses, which was completed in August. The significant restoration endeavor, highlighted by the 2025 Moses Award for Preservation Projects by the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the 2025 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award by the Preservation League of New York State, transformed the historic 80-foot frieze, created by Barthé in 1939. Both phases of this project build on a broader effort from PHCF in collaboration with NYCHA to preserve significant cultural landmarks within New York City’s public housing communities.

The full design and engagement team includes: Artist and Design Team: Jerome Haferd, Ifeoma Ebo, Pedro Cruz Cruz, and Violet Nash Greenberg, Engagement support: Anre Morain, Onika Gregory, Barbara Hammond, Fabrication: 618 Design LLC, Construction: Franpen Restoration, Lempira, Lighting: Bartholomew Lighting, Leni Schwendinger Light Projects. The team worked in close coordination with NYCHA’s Architecture & Engineering Services Department and the development’s Property Management team, who provided guidance on design and feasibility of the installation.

This effort is part of NYCHA’s Connected Communities program, which focuses on transforming and modernizing open spaces through public-private partnerships. The program’s efforts are based on participatory planning and design, striving to enhance physical and social connections between residents and their communities.

The design team, led by Ebo and Haferd with Pedro Cruz Cruz and Violet Greenberg, engaged Kingsborough Houses residents, local artists from the Fulton Art Fair, including the late artist-in-residence, Larry Weekes, lighting designers, and cultural historians, to reflect authentic community voices in the installation. Over the course of months-long workshops with the Kingsborough Houses Resident Association and a Stakeholder Advisory Group, participants shared memories, drawings, and stories that shaped the inscriptions on the sculptures. These include oral histories from residents, historic accounts of Barthé’s life and work, residents’ personal memories of the Exodus and Dance frieze, and quotes on the meaning of community, extended family, and resilience from Kingsborough residents. Through this project, Kingsborough Houses becomes not just a site of historic art restoration, but an active cultural hub where the legacies of the Harlem Renaissance meet the living creativity of present-day Brooklyn.

Fabricated locally in Brooklyn, the sculptures are inscribed with illustrations that draw from Egyptian and other diasporic motifs and Barthé’s own vocabulary. Several sculptures incorporate seating elements seamlessly integrated into their design, inviting residents to gather and engage with the work. In the evenings, the lighting features integrated into each structure will illuminate the pathways and open spaces of Kingsborough Houses, guiding visitors and residents from neighboring thoroughfares towards the Exodus & Dance frieze. The open space around the frieze was transformed with improved lighting and new community-inspired murals on the backside of the wall.

In 2019, NYCHA received $1.8 million in funding for both phases of the project from former City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and former City Council Member Alicka Ampry-Samuel, which contributed to an additional $2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to the Public Housing Community Fund in 2023. This funding supported the frieze restoration, an artist-in-residency program, an oral history project, and the installation of the heritage walk. Other collaborators include the Kingsborough Houses Stakeholder Advisory Group, Weeksville Heritage Center, African Peach Arts Coalition, the NYC Public Design Commission, and various local cultural institutions and community-based organizations. The project aims to set a precedent for similar initiatives across NYCHA developments, inspiring future partnerships and investments in art conservation, artist-in-residence programs, and community engagement.

About the Public Housing Community Fund 
The Public Housing Community Fund is an independent not-for-profit organization that creates and leverages resources and relationships to enhance the opportunities and quality of life for New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents and their communities while uplifting the importance of public housing in New York City. www.communityfund.nyc.

About the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)       
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in North America, was created in 1934 to provide decent, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. NYCHA is home to one in 17 New Yorkers, providing affordable housing to 520,808 authorized residents through public housing and Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) programs as well as Section 8 housing. NYCHA has 177,569 apartments in 2,411 buildings across 335 conventional public housing and PACT developments. In addition, NYCHA connects residents to critical programs and services from external and internal partners, with a focus on economic opportunity, youth, seniors, and social services. With a housing stock that spans all five boroughs, NYCHA is a city within a city.  

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.

About Creative Urban Alchemy 

Ifeoma Ebo is a Nigerian-American, Brooklyn-based designer with a twenty-year track record in transforming urban spaces into platforms for equity and design excellence. She leads Creative Urban Alchemy LLC (CUA), an award-winning design & planning studio working at the intersection of art, architecture, urban design, and planning, centering cultural heritage and equity in praxis. They advocate for, design, plan with, and visually showcase the stories of community. Ebo’s artwork has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum, Cornell University Willard Straight Hall Gallery,  MIT Rotch Library Gallery, and the African University of Science & Technology Center for the Advancement of Afrocentric Design. She has most recently received awards and fellowships from the Black Artists & Designers Guild, NYS Council on the Arts, Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Architectural League, and United States Artists. For more information, visit www.cuadesign.com or follow on Instagram @cua_design.

About Jerome Haferd Studio

Jerome Haferd is an architect, public artist, and educator based in Harlem, NYC. Founded in 2012, Jerome Haferd Studio critically engages built environment projects in both urban and rural contexts, often looking to Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized histories to unlock new potentials for architecture, design, and cultural infrastructure. Haferd has installed two interactive civic art installations at Marcus Garvey Park – Sankofa (2023) and Aleia (2024) – with permanent public artworks underway along Manhattan’s East River Esplanade and the Kingsborough Houses in Brooklyn. He is a 2025 United States Artist Fellow, participating in a group show exhibiting at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale U.S. Pavilion. Haferd is an assistant professor of architecture at City College, where he co-directs the Place, Memory, and Culture Incubator. He has served on the Board of Directors of The Architectural League of New York since 2023. For more information, visit jeromehaferd.com or follow on Instagram (@jeromehaferdstudio).

About Weeksville Heritage Center
Weeksville Heritage Center is a historic site and cultural center in Central Brooklyn that uses education, arts, and a social justice lens to preserve, document, and inspire engagement with the history of Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America, and the Historic Hunterfly Road Houses.

About Fulton Art Fair
Established in 1958, the Fulton Art Fair (FAF) annually exhibits fine visual art of both renowned and emerging artists from the USA, Africa & the Caribbean. Fulton Art Fair was for the exhibition, promotion, and publication of the fine and performing arts in the City & State of New York, consisting primarily of artists of African American descent; the stimulation and encouragement of community interest in the field of fine and performing arts, the development and achievement of creativity as an expression of the community’s status and heritage.