Long before Wakanda, before the red carpets and the two Oscars, there was a Hampton student wandering the library stacks and discovering, for the first time, that designing clothes for the stage and screen was a career a person could have. That library sat in the Huntington Building. “I remember walking into the Huntington building,” Ruth E. Carter ’82 told Forbes this month.
Today that building is the Hampton University Museum, the oldest African American museum in the nation. And this fall, the most celebrated costume designer of her generation filled three of its galleries with her work.
She came home.
What’s waiting in the galleries
Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design — HOMECOMING opened on October 22, during Homecoming week, and will remain on view until October 2027. According to Hampton University, visitors will find Carter’s designs from Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Selma and Sinners, the kind of garments that turned costume design into a central part of how audiences understood those stories.
Getting the show here was its own feat. The full traveling exhibition covers some 6,000 square feet and has already toured eight museums, including the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Jamestown Settlement, Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture and the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film. Forbes reports that the exhibition had no open dates until 2028, yet a selection made its way to Hampton anyway, and the installation, which usually takes about a month, was finished in five days.
Hampton’s version carries something no other stop could offer. Alongside Carter’s pieces, the galleries feature costume design by other Hampton alumni, which makes the exhibition as much about a pipeline of talent as about one designer. The museum, whose collections are overseen by curator Dr. Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, already had a Carter connection: it holds three of her pieces on loan, including work from Malcolm X and Coming to America.
“I dreamed big dreams within these walls.”
Ruth E. Carter ’82, on Hampton’s Little Theatre and Costume Shop
A legacy of firsts
Carter’s résumé reads like a list of doors opened for the first time. Her work on Black Panther made her the first African American to win the Academy Award for Costume Design. When she won again for Wakanda Forever in 2023, she became the first Black woman to win two Oscars. She is the most-nominated Black woman in Oscar history and the first Black costume designer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has dressed more than a dozen Spike Lee films.
It started on our campus. As a student, Carter learned her craft in the Little Theatre and the Costume Shop. She returned to give the 2023 Commencement address, came back this fall as grand marshal of the Homecoming Parade, and will soon have her name on Armstrong Hall: Hampton is renaming its Department of Visual and Performing Arts in her honor.
Why you should make the trip
Photos can show you a costume. They can’t show you the scale of it, the hand-finished detail, or what it feels like to stand in front of it in the very building where its designer first discovered her calling. Few exhibitions offer that kind of full circle.
Bring the family. Bring the young person in your life who sketches in the margins of every notebook. Bring your chapter. Make a day of it: walk the campus, stop at Emancipation Oak, look out over the water and remember why we call it our Home by the Sea. The museum is open on Saturdays, and the exhibition runs for nearly a full year, so there’s time to plan, but don’t wait until the last month.
Plan your visit
- Where: Hampton University Museum, Huntington Building, 200 William R. Harvey Way, Hampton, VA 23668. Enter campus through the main gate at the light on William R. Harvey Way.
- On view: now through October 2027
- Hours: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.; closed Sunday
- Closed: Thanksgiving (Nov. 26–28), winter break (Dec. 19–Jan. 4) and Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Jan. 18)
- Admission: adults $20; youth 6–17 $10; up to three children 5 and under free with each adult ticket. Hampton students, faculty and staff are free with ID but must register for a ticket online. Your ticket covers every gallery in the museum.
- Groups: outside student groups are $10 per student and $15 per chaperone (one chaperone per 10 students); schedule with the museum in advance.
- Questions: 757-727-5308
Hours and prices are from the museum’s website as of November 9, 2026. Please check before you go.
Help keep the next Ruth Carter in school
Every legend in that museum began as a student who stayed enrolled long enough to find a calling. Carter needed time in the Huntington Building’s library and the Costume Shop to discover hers. Some Hampton students today are losing that time. A past-due tuition balance from a previous semester can keep a student from registering for classes or walking at graduation.
The NHAA, Inc. Student Emergency Fund exists for exactly that moment. It awards current Hampton students up to $5,000 toward a past-due tuition balance from a previous semester, paid directly to the student’s Hampton University account so the student can register and keep going. Every award is made by Hamptonians, for Hamptonians.
Carter herself has steered the exhibition toward students: Forbes reports she suggested that admission fees support an endowed scholarship. If her costumes move you, as they will, carry that spirit one step further. The next designer, scientist, teacher or Oscar winner may be one balance away from leaving Hampton. Your gift can keep them here.
Sources: Rachel Elspeth Gross, “Ruth E. Carter And Costume Design Excellence At Hampton University Museum,” Forbes, Nov. 6, 2026; Hampton University, “Ruth E. Carter Brings Afrofuturism, Inspiration and a Legacy of Firsts to Her Home by the Sea,” Oct. 15, 2026; Hampton University Museum.