After implementing their research abroad in Ghana last summer, four President’s Award for Global Learning students brought their impactful findings back to Texas to create the Museum of Color—an interactive art exhibition aimed at expanding the Austin community’s understanding of colorism.

With funding from the President’s Award, the team founded the Color Complex, a student-run initiative that explores and mitigates the influences of colorism while cataloguing the individual ways this global issue manifests.

Last summer, the team headed to Accra, Ghana where they studied the differences in perception of colorism internationally and closely examined the different ways colorism presents itself. They conducted over 80 in-depth interviews with people in Ghana and Austin to understand how the phenomenon affects each of us independently.

The students presented their findings to the university and Austin community through their immersive exhibit featuring a collection of sculptures and multimedia displays capturing various individuals’ personal history with colorism, including the narratives of exhibition goers themselves, who were able to contribute their own accounts of colorism to the installation.

Watch a video of the team’s exhibition.