The Wards of Newark: Then and Now is a citywide exhibition of newly commissioned and archival photographs by Newark-born, multidisciplinary artist Manuel Acevedo, running from May to October 2026. Curated by New Arts faculty founder, Professor Salamishah Tillet, the exhibition explores themes of urban gentrification, belonging, and community, while also exemplifying Rutgers Newark’s exemplary record of publicly engaged scholarship and role as an anchor art institution in the City of Newark.
The exhibition revisits Acevedo’s first sustained photography series, Wards of Newark (1982-1987), in which he documented the diverse landscapes and communities of his hometown—a city shaped by periods of unrest and urban renewal initiatives that tore down existing housing to erect massive housing projects. Comprising thousands of black-and-white documentary images of Newark’s five wards — Central, North, South, East, and West, the photographs captured the richness of neighborhood life and lore, while also addressing the political issues of residential segregation, urban poverty, overpolicing, and the complexities of the early administration of Mayor Sharpe James—the city’s second Black mayor from 1986 to 2006.
Manuel Acevedo is a Bronx-based multidisciplinary artist. Acevedo began his career as a street photographer in Newark. His work combines photo-based imagery, conceptual graffiti ciphers, and architectonic visualizations that reflect the ever-shifting boundaries of diasporic communities within the urban landscape. Acevedo’s public art projects and site-based installations address the contested histories of shared spaces. His work is built on over forty years of practice, inspired by urban experiences in the United States and by city lore as a first-generation Puerto Rican artist.
Acevedo has been exhibiting his work in the United States and abroad for over thirty-five years. Exhibitions and installations include New York University; The Latinx Project; RicanVisions; “Penumbras: A narrative of Art Center/South Florida”; “A Call for Peace” at Military Park, Monument Lab & Express Newark, Rutgers–Newark; “Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography,” curated by E. Carmen Ramos at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and El Museo del Barrio in New York; “Intersecting Trajectories” at Rush Arts Gallery in New York; “Mirror Mirror” at Express Newark–Rutgers University; Round 36, “The House That Alhacen Built” at Project Row Houses in Houston, TX (2012); and “Al-Ghaib: Aesthetics of Disappearance” at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2011). He has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx River Art Center, the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, TX, and Jersey City Museum. Among his awards and residencies are those from the Colene Brown Art Prize at BRIC, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the BRIO Award, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Visual Artist Network, Longwood Arts Project, the Mid-Atlantic Foundation, the Museum of Art & Design (Artist Studios), and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
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