Wards of Newark: Manuel Acevedo is a citywide public art exhibition featuring archival photographs of Newark, taken from 1982 to 1987, by the multidisciplinary artist Manuel Acevedo. Located across the five wards, West, South, Central, North, and East, the billboard-size images reflect the city’s past vitality and current diversity, inviting viewers to remember Newark as a place of home, community, and cosmopolitanism. 

Hosted as a partnership between Rutgers University-Newark and the City of Newark and curated by Salamishah Tillet, Director of New Arts at Rutgers University—Newark, “Wards of Newark” draws from an archive of over 3,200 black and white images by Acevedo, most of which have never been shared with the public.