Writing

Writing has been central to Gardullo's work as a curator, historian, and public scholar. Through books, exhibition catalogues, essays, and articles, he explores how histories of slavery, freedom, race, and memory continue to shape contemporary culture, public life, and understandings of justice and belonging.

Featured Publications

In Slavery's Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World, 2024

Edited, with Introduction and Select Essays

Kirkus Reviews: Starred Review. "A must-read about the power of artistry over overt oppression."

Make Good The Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and its Legacies, 2021

Edited, with Introduction

Washington Informer: “Make Good the Promises” will have you hooked. Pick it up, you’ll love it, cross your heart.

From No Return: The 221-Year Journey of the Slave Ship Sao Jose, 2016

Edited with Essays by Paul Gardullo, Lonnie G. Bunch, III, Steve Lubkemann and Jaco Boshoff

New York Times on the discovery of the Sao Jose

Books and Major Contributions

What a Dream Can Do: Building a Collection, Preserving a Legacy, 2026

Selected Essays including chapter on "Pivotal Moments"

Essay: Seizing Freedom, The 1860s in The Promise of a Nation: Commemorating 250 Years of Patriotism, Resilience, and Aspirations from the National Collection, 2026

Essay: Scurlock's Washington by Rhea L. Combs and Paul Gardullo from Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington, 2022.

Scurlock's Washington Excerpt

The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise, 2008

Edited, with Introduction and select essays

Lens Culture: a vivid portrait of black Washington, D.C., in all its guises—its challenges and its victories, its dignity and its determination...highly recommended.

Online Writing

Smithsonian Magazine

Paul Gardullo, Artifacts from the Tulsa Race Massacre. Objects and documents offer a profound opportunity for reckoning with a past that still lingers, 2021.

Smithsonian Magazine

Paul Gardullo, A Long Story of Freedom Seeking. A curator's insight into the Emancipation Proclamation, 2024.

CNN

Paul Gardullo and Lonnie G. Bunch, III, Why Emmett Till's Case Still Matters to American History and Our Future, 2018.

Selected Essays & Articles

Introduction, The Emancipation Proclamation and Other Documents of Freedom
Smithsonian Edition (2022)

Making a Way Out of No Way: The National Museum of African American History and Culture (with Lonnie G. Bunch III)
History Workshop Journal (2017)

Mae Reeves: Making a Way Out of No Way
Smithsonian American Women (2019)

Spectacles of Slavery: Pageantry, Film and Early Twentieth-Century Public Memory
Slavery & Abolition (2013)

"Just Keeps Rollin' Along": Rebellions, Revolts and Radical Black Memories of Slavery in the 1930s
Patterns of Prejudice, special issue "Imagining Transatlantic Slavery and Abolition" (2007)

Angola Prison: Collecting and Interpreting the Afterlives of Slavery in a National Museum
Forum Journal: The Journal of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (2017)

Recovering Global Truths in Small Places: Perspectives from the Slave Wrecks Project (with Stephen Lubkemann)
Environmental Justice as a Civil Right, National Pavilion of Antigua and Barbuda, Venice Biennale publication (2019)

Heading Out for the Big Sea: Hughes, Haiti, and Constructions of Diaspora in Cold War America
The Langston Hughes Review (2004)

Exhibition Review: "African Voices," A Permanent Exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History
Journal of American Folklore (2002)

Exhibition Review: "Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou"
Journal of American Folklore (1999)

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