Black women have been inside Shakespeare’s world for more than four centuries, and Patricia Akhimie says the poems cannot tell you what any of them sounded like.
“The poem cannot deliver that,” she said. “It can’t deliver the voice of this Black woman or any Black woman.”
That gap is what she built an exhibition around. Akhimie, director of the Folger Institute, curated To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare, which opened at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington on October 16, 2026 and runs through May 2, 2027. It gathers nearly 100 objects. Admission is free, with a $15 recommended donation.
“There’s a sort of longstanding myth that Shakespeare’s world was not a diverse world,” she said.
The objects answer that. A 1645 etching of a Black woman in a lace kerchief hat, by the printmaker Wenceslaus Hollar. The copybook Phillis Wheatley kept, which dates from 1773. A 1935 magazine feature on Ethel Waters playing Desdemona. A 2020 archival pigment print by the artist Kennedi Carter. The exhibition takes its name from Sonnet 130, and the actor Adjoa Andoh narrates the audio guide.
“The women whose lives are represented in the show have never been linked together in this way,” Akhimie said.
What she keeps returning to is the keeping. Somebody decided which pages were worth a box and a label, and for four centuries those decisions were made about Black women rather than with them.
“We are the archivists of the future,” Akhimie said.
