In a move that may shine light on how museums and institutions could share the responsibility of preserving cultural heritage, Alabama’s Talladega College has entered into a partnership with three art institutions to share a monumental artwork.

The alliance—between the historically Black college and the Toledo Museum of Art, Art Bridges, and the Terra Foundation for American Art—ensures that six murals by artist Hale A. Woodruff will remain visible to the public while supporting the college’s long-term financial health.

Woodruff’s murals, painted between 1939 and 1942, depict key moments in African American history: the Amistad uprising in 1839, the Underground Railroad, and the founding of Talladega itself just after the end of the Civil War. For decades the works have hung in the school’s Savery Library, where they were rarely seen outside the college community. Beginning in 2012, the works underwent conservation and toured the United States as part of a traveling exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art before returning to campus in 2020.

Now, the Toledo Museum of Art has acquired The Underground Railroad (1942), while Art Bridges and the Terra Fou...