INVENTORS MAKERS AND MOVERS
Innovation Is More Than Technology. It Is Culture.
Inventors Makers and Movers (IMM) begins with a proposition: African American invention is not only a history of technological achievement. It is also a history of creative thought.
Between 1865 and 1939, generations of African Americans emerged from slavery into a society that offered freedom in law while continuing to impose extraordinary economic, educational, racial and social constraints. Within those conditions, African American inventors conceived new ways of working, producing, communicating, traveling, farming, manufacturing and living.
We believe these inventions deserve to be examined not simply as isolated mechanical accomplishments, but as evidence of a broader African American creative intelligence—a practice of transformation shaped by necessity, experience, observation and imagination.
IMM asks us to look again.
What happens when an invention is considered alongside a painting, sculpture, musical composition or work of architecture? What can the objects created under constraint tell us about the people who created them? And what happens when contemporary artists are invited to interpret those inventions through the experiences and artistic languages of our own time?
This inquiry forms the foundation of Inventors Makers and Movers.
ART
IMM brings African American invention into conversation with contemporary art.
We invite artists to investigate historical inventions not simply as artifacts, but as points of departure for new creative work. Through sculpture, installation, photography, sound, film, performance, design and emerging media, participating artists reconsider the inventor, the invention and the social circumstances from which innovation emerged.
In doing so, IMM proposes a broader understanding of African American aesthetics—one that recognizes creativity not solely through conventional categories of fine art, but through the ability to transform limitation into possibility, necessity into form, and experience into innovation.
The invention becomes more than the subject of the artwork.
It becomes part of the history of art itself.
BUSINESS
The story does not end when the patent is issued.
Many inventions became foundations upon which products, industries, services and businesses continued to develop. IMM reconnects this historical innovation to the contemporary economy.
We invite businesses whose products, technologies or industries share a meaningful relationship with these histories to participate directly in the exhibition experience. Rather than treating sponsorship simply as a name on a wall, IMM seeks to create active partnerships between culture and commerce.
Within this model, the historical inventor represents an origin. The contemporary artist interprets that origin. The participating business demonstrates its continuing relevance.
Together, they reveal a lineage:
invention → industry → art → enterprise → community.
This approach allows business participation to become part of the story itself while creating new opportunities to support artists, exhibitions, education, internships and community programs.
COMMUNITY
IMM believes an exhibition should do more than occupy a gallery.
It should create movement beyond it.
Our exhibitions serve as platforms for education, workshops, internships, lectures, conversations, mentorship, entrepreneurship and STEAM engagement. Through partnerships with schools, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, museums, cultural institutions, businesses and community organizations, IMM connects historical knowledge with contemporary opportunity.
Young people should encounter these inventors not simply as historical figures whose achievements should be memorized, but as evidence of what becomes possible when intelligence, curiosity and imagination are applied to real problems.
The lesson is not merely:
Look what they invented.
The larger lesson is:
Look how they thought.
That distinction is central to IMM.
We want future generations to recognize innovation as part of their cultural inheritance and to understand that they, too, possess the ability to observe their circumstances, question existing systems and imagine what does not yet exist.
FROM NECESSITY TO POSSIBILITY
Inventors Makers and Movers exists at the intersection of art, invention, history, business and community.
We recover histories that have too often remained outside the center of American cultural narratives, but recovery alone is not enough.
We activate them.
We bring historical inventors into conversation with contemporary artists. We connect inventions to the businesses and industries that followed them. We bring those relationships into communities through exhibitions, education and opportunity.
In this way, the museum and exhibition become more than destinations for remembering the past. They become places where history generates contemporary creativity and contemporary creativity generates future possibility.
The African American inventors who emerged during the generations following Emancipation did more than make things.
They demonstrated a way of thinking.
They observed.
They adapted.
They reimagined.
They transformed.
They made necessity productive.
And through their inventions, they left behind something larger than the objects themselves: evidence of a creative tradition.
Inventors Makers and Movers exists to make that tradition visible, and to move it forward.
Inventors Makers & Movers (IMM)
Preserving the Past, Igniting the Future
+1 901-496-0313
1268 Haynes Street, Memphis Tennessee 38114
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