Online Exhibition “Chez Baldwin: An Exploration of the Life and Works of James Baldwin”

Chez Baldwin is a digital exhibition that explores James Baldwin’s life and works through the lens of his house in St. Paul de Vence, France, where he resided the last seventeen years of his life. Photographs of the interior and exterior of the house, a medieval villa, grace the pages of the section titled “Power of Place.” For Baldwin, his home in St. Paul was an enormously powerful place for writing, healing, and gathering.

The exhibition’s core also includes four additional stories that provide an introduction to Baldwin, insight into his international travels as well as details about his civil rights activism, and an overview of his literary career. Images of collection objects acquired from the house are integral to Chez Baldwin.

Also featured is a Learning Lab for teachers where a Baldwin literary achievements timeline, a listing of resources, links to NMAAHC public programs about Baldwin, and notes by authors who have recently written about Baldwin’s life in St. Paul can be found.