Exposeum™ is a trademark submitted by Hermon Johnson Jr. in connection with museum services focused on exposing and sharing Black history.
Facebook updates
Open Facebook ↗
Exposeum
Mound Bayou Museum
The First Exposeum
A museum concept rooted in uncovering, preserving, and publicly sharing the history that has too often been kept outside of the record.
Museum concept
Exposeum
Coined by
Hermon Johnson, Jr.
The work
A process of bringing hidden Black history into public view through community memory, research, and interpretation.
Founder’s statement
“We as Black people are really just now discovering our history. The whole point of this is that instead of us just knowing it and putting it in a museum — which is what museums usually do — we are exposing our history. That’s why I call it an Exposeum. It’s a process, not just a place.”
The meaning
What is an Exposeum?
The Mound Bayou Museum is proud to be the first Exposeum: a new kind of museum created to uncover the parts of Black history that have been buried or withheld from the people whose lives and communities shaped it.
Hermon Johnson Jr. created the word Exposeum by joining expose with museum. An Exposeum actively searches for history, shares it with the public, and ensures that Black communities can see their own truth represented with care and clarity.
In this museum, history is treated as something still being recovered. The Exposeum approach honors the record while making room for community testimony, family memory, and the stories that survived outside formal archives.
Expose
To uncover what has been hidden.
Museum
To preserve and interpret public memory.
Exposeum
A place where hidden history is brought into view.
Exposeum™ is a trademark submitted by Hermon Johnson Jr. in connection with museum services focused on exposing and sharing Black history.
From the museum
Stay Connected With Mound Bayou Museum
See our latest Facebook updates and explore videos that share the history, community, and ongoing work of the museum.
Video playlist
Open YouTube ↗
This embed currently displays uploads from the museum’s YouTube channel. To use a separate curated playlist, replace the value after list= in the iframe URL with that playlist’s ID.