“Before It’s Gone: Archive to Survive” Book Launch and Panel Discussion

On Saturday, November 7, 2026, from 3 to 6 PM, Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, hosts a panel discussion and book launch with the Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine (BHAM). Artists Oasa DuVerney and Mildred Beltré created Before It’s Gone: Archive to Survive, a community story collection that preserves two years of narratives from longtime residents of one Crown Heights block. The afternoon explores art and community engagement as strategies for preserving Black and Brown geographies in Brooklyn. Admission is free.

About the Book

Before It’s Gone: Archive to Survive is a community story collection by the Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine. Gathered over two years, it documents the experiences of longtime community members on a single block in Crown Heights. The book brings together narratives, photographs, and artworks that stand as communal testimony to the lives lived on that block, preserved before they are erased and forgotten.

About the Artists

Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine is a community-based public art project founded by Mildred Beltré and Oasa DuVerney in 2010. Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine is based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and creates art for and with their neighbors. Beltré and DuVerney have been neighbors in the same building for over twenty-five years, and their collaboration was born out of their regular drawing and sewing nights hosted in each other’s apartments. As artists, educators, and parents, they learned that sharing their creative skills and time with each other helped to develop a close friendship that they could extend to the rest of their community. At the same time, they experienced intensifying gentrification in their neighborhood, which was displacing its most vulnerable community members. Their work addresses the insecurity and distrust among neighbors created by the over-policing that often accompanies rapid gentrification.

“Weeksville has always been a place of resistance and preservation of the past while looking to the future. The project of the Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine has also always been about resistance; resistance to gentrification, resistance to being criminalized simply for existing and being out on the street, and resistance to erasure. Archive to Survive documents the lives lived and currently living on our one block in Crown Heights. We asked neighbors to tell us a story about living on the block. The stories recall neighbors and places no longer in the neighborhood. Together they recall tragedy, love, and laughter. We are excited to share our stories with the Weeksville community and beyond.” – Oasa DuVerney and Mildred Beltré, co-creators, Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine

Join us on Saturday, November 7, at 2 PM for stories, art, and conversation. Books will be available at the event, with an option for the authors to sign books after the panel discussion.

Support for Weeksville’s programs and initiatives is provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Arts; Hon. Kathy Hochul, Governor of the State of New York; the New York State Council on the Arts; the New York State Office of Children and Family Services; the State of New York; and Assemblywoman Latrice Walker; Hon. Zohran K. Mamdani, Mayor of the City of New York; Hon. Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn Borough President; the New York City Department of Youth & Community Development; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, including Council Member Darlene Mealy and Council Member Chi Ossé.

Additional support is provided by the Altschul Foundation, Altman Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Brooklyn Org, Charina Foundation, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, Ford Foundation, Hyde and Watson Foundation, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, Mellon Foundation, Mosaic Network & Fund, National Grid Corporation, Scherman Foundation, The Robert M. Schiffman Foundation, and William C. Bullitt Foundation.