Van Cortlandt House Museum presents Overlapping Empires, an exhibition by Jamaica-born, Bronx-based artist Samantha Box, on view from June through August 2026. Installed throughout the historic house, the exhibition brings contemporary art into direct dialogue with one of New York City’s earliest colonial sites.

Presented during the nation’s 250th anniversary, the exhibition engages directly with the museum’s own foundations. The Van Cortlandt family amassed wealth through trade with the Caribbean and Latin America – the materials that formed the foundations of the family’s wealth were the products of the forced labor of African people that the family enslaved on this plantation – while negotiating the fluctuating political dynamics and loyalties necessary to maintain control of their commercial enterprise and wealth. As the oldest house in the Bronx, the museum offers a critical setting for examining how colonial economies, migration, and nation-building continue to structure contemporary life.