Research Highlight - Reflections with TJ Tallie

"The Floating World: The Pasts They Brought With Them" (#12/30) by Sanford Biggers, 2013. Paper collage and silkscreen with hand coloring.

Reflections with Historian, TJ Tallie

When historian, TJ Tallie, was invited to collaborate on the development of the exhibition Race: Power, Resistance, and Change, he brought with him years of research on colonialism, belonging, and resistance. 

Tallie is a scholar from Southern California, whose work spans histories from South Africa to New Zealand to Canada. He was one of several historians who worked closely with the exhibit team throughout development.

"As a historian of race and colonialism and belonging who has lived and worked in San Diego for much of my life," Tallie reflected, "This was a chance to really turn that interpretive lens and the thoughtful work I already do back to the place that I live and to think about, what are the stories that shape my lived existence here, and the many millions of other people here."

For Tallie, the exhibition represented a form of responsible local scholarship and an opportunity to connect historical research with the communities, landscapes, and lived experiences that continue to shape Southern California today.

This interview was conducted by Exhibit Developer Melinda Barnadas.

Q: Now that the exhibit is up, what feels most essential for visitors to connect with?

TJ Tallie: What struck me most about the exhibition was how much more tactile it was than I had imagined. Experiencing it meant feeling my body in the space—encountering objects, moving through the gallery, and engaging with history in a physical way. Whether learning about African American histories through quilt patterns or navigating spaces that reflected Kumeyaay experiences, the act of moving through the exhibition became part of the learning itself.

One of the gifts museums offer, for better and for worse, is the ability to place our bodies in space. To encounter ideas I had spent years researching and contemplating—not just intellectually, but physically—was a remarkable experience. Seeing those histories translated into something that could be felt throughout the body was both unexpected and powerful.

What I found especially meaningful was the way the exhibition grounds visitors in the lived realities of racial histories in Southern California and San Diego. The through line connecting different forms of enslavement, resistance, and systems of power felt clear and compelling. It was also exciting to see how my own work had been woven together with the contributions of other historians, artists, and collaborators.

There was something particularly profound about occasionally recognizing a sentence I had written while moving through the gallery. It's difficult to describe, but it felt a bit like seeing a finished tapestry and noticing a single thread that came from you. The exhibition is so much larger than any one contribution, yet there is something deeply rewarding about recognizing your small part within a collective work.

For me, seeing stories of Black resistance, Indigenous resistance, and challenges to systems of enslavement and exclusion situated within a broader history of race was especially powerful. Those narratives felt connected, visible, and alive. The experience left me feeling both excited and empowered, and I hope visitors feel that same sense of possibility and connection when they encounter the exhibition.

Q: Is there anything that you would want to highlight or safeguard in how history and lived experience are being presented together?

TJ Tallie: One thing I would want to highlight is the reminder that these things are fluid. Not only are our identities fluid, but resistance itself is complicated and multifaceted.

Many of us are used to histories being taught as regrettable, top-down exercises in violence where something bad happened, and it feels inevitable and all-powerful. What I appreciate, and what I think is already being safeguarded in this exhibition, is the way it gives voice not only to violence and oppression, but also to resistance, accommodation, and challenge.

As someone of a certain age, I'm accustomed to museums and historical narratives presenting long histories of violence from the top down. What this exhibition does differently is create space to acknowledge that violence and pressure existed while also showing how people responded to them. People were flexible. They adapted. They challenged the conditions they faced. That feels dynamic in a really important way, and I hope that remains central to how these stories are told.

I think it's especially important to focus on the human dimensions of race. Race is dynamic; it is not static. And neither are the people who are racialized. They navigate these realities, make sense of them, and reshape them in new ways.

In turn, I think that invites visitors to consider how their own identities can be dynamic and how their own forms of resistance can shift over time. Rather than pinning history to a wall and making it feel timeless or fixed, it's important to present it as something mutable and evolving.

Q: Was there a particular part of the exhibition that resonated with you most or became a favorite experience?

TJ Tallie: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed stepping out onto the balcony. It felt exciting because it momentarily took me out of the role of simply receiving information within the gallery. Instead, it gave me a chance to pause and reflect: What am I looking at? How does this familiar place appear differently from this perspective?

I've been to Balboa Park thousands of times, but from that vantage point it suddenly felt a little disorienting in a productive way. It encouraged me to think differently about the space around me and about the exhibition itself.

What I found especially meaningful was what happened when I walked back inside. That transition naturally moved me into the next section of the exhibition, and I found myself looking down the hallway and seeing other collections and artworks in a new way. There was something powerful about moving between the exhibition and the broader museum environment.

The experience of stepping out onto that balcony and then returning to the gallery was something I never could have anticipated. It created a moment of reflection, perspective, and reorientation. Looking back, I think that was my favorite part of the exhibition.

Q: What is it like to be invited to contribute to an exhibition about race as a person of color, given the way that work can involve both expertise and lived experience? How does that feel to you?

TJ Tallie: I am not unfamiliar with this experience. As a historian of race and a queer Black scholar who works on racialization, I am often asked—across a wide spectrum, from thoughtful to transactional—to speak about aspects of my lived experience, usually in the hope that it helps others understand broader questions of humanity. Most of the time I’m in a good place with it, but at times it can feel exploitative or exhausting.

In this case, it felt different. It felt exciting because I was being invited to bring not only my scholarly expertise, but also my lived experience in a more intentional and structured way.

There are many other incredibly talented historians working on racial formation, settler colonialism, and violence. But as a Black person living in San Diego, this opportunity felt particularly meaningful. It aligns with a shift in my own work over the past several years, moving toward telling Black histories in this region even though that was not originally the trajectory I imagined for my career. Through projects like work with the Lambda Archives on Black LGBTQ life in San Diego, and now this exhibition, I’ve come to see this as a significant and responsible turn in my scholarship.

It also speaks to the complexity of being part of a Black community here, one that is at once visible and invisible, prominent and easily overlooked, desired and often exploited. In that context, this project felt like an opportunity to be seen, but also to contribute something grounded in both expertise and lived experience.

What made this experience especially meaningful, however, was its collaborative nature. I was not being asked to explain an entire exhibition on my own – which would have felt overwhelming – but instead to be part of a collective of voices working together to articulate how these historical processes shape our bodies and this land.

That sense of collective authorship matters. It creates space to step back and think about the skills I have developed over the course of my career, and how I want to use them moving forward.

As someone whose body is racialized, and who engages daily with the structural legacies of colonial violence and racism, I feel empowered by this work. Rather than being asked, once again, to justify or explain my humanity in abstract terms, this felt like an opportunity to be in community with others who are also insisting that we matter and who are supported by an institution that makes space for that to be said.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t address?

Now that the exhibition exists, it has this sense of multiplicity. It is exciting, slightly chaotic, and beautiful. It will never do everything we want it to do, and it will never do any single thing perfectly. I find myself both excited and a little frustrated by that, which probably says something about me as well.

Once something is out in the world, you can always imagine how it might be expanded or refined. But I’m grateful that it exists at all, and grateful that it can hold a range of visitors and perspectives, gently but unflinchingly. It doesn’t coddle people, but it doesn’t mislead them either.

It could always go further, but it does what it does with honesty. And for that, I feel really good about it.