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Slave Potter Dave Drake | Muse Moments | KET

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Dave Drake's Stunning Ceramics

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The Enslaved Artist Whose Pottery Was an Act of Resistance

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Poetic jars by David Drake are setting records at auction and starring in art museums, showcasing the artistry of enslaved African Americans.

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NPR Feature: Teaching Students a New Black History

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NPR Feature: Teaching Students a New Black History

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When you think of the history of Black education in the United States, you might think of Brown vs. Board of Education and the fight to integrate public schools. But there's a parallel history too, of Black people pooling their resources to educate and empower themselves independently.

Enslaved people learned to read and write whenever and wherever they could, often in secret and against the law. "In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems,"like convincing white children to help him, wrote Frederick Douglass. "I had no regular teacher."

After the Civil War, says educator Kaya Henderson, Black people started "freedmen's schools" to teach former slaves literacy and the other skills they would need to participate as citizens. "In the 12-year period that is Reconstruction," she adds, "we started 5,000 community schools. We started 37 historically black colleges and universities."

A century later, during the civil rights movement, educators founded "freedom schools" combining basic literacy with civic skills, like how to register to vote.

And in 1969, the Black Panther Party started a free breakfast program for schoolchildren. Eventually it fed tens of thousands of hungry kids oranges, eggs and chocolate milk at 45 sites around the country. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, reportedly got the Chicago police to try to sabotage the program, because he considered it to be such powerful positive messaging for the radical movement he was determined to destroy. Instead, the federal government joined the effort; President Richard M. Nixon increased funding to guarantee all qualifying children a right to free lunch at school.

"We have a tradition of educating ourselves and we've forgotten that," Henderson says.

Now, she's started her own effort, dubbed Reconstruction.us, as a way of continuing that tradition.

Henderson led the Washington, D.C., public school system from 2010 to 2016. There, she worked to diversify the curriculum to ensure that students had both "windows" on the broader world, but also "mirrors" that reflected themselves. The result? "When those kids saw themselves in the curriculum, they came alive. They felt validated. They saw their communities as worthy and they just operated differently."

But, Henderson says, time is limited in traditional public schools, and she wanted to see what could be done with a voluntary, supplemental program where the teachers and the children were all Black.

"I thought a lot about my friends who went to Hebrew school on the weekends or Chinese school on the weekends" - a place to maybe learn a language, pick up some cultural know-how and affirm a positive identity. "Other ethnic groups don't rely on the government to teach their kids about themselves. Why are we relying on the government to teach black kids about our history, our culture, our heroes and heroines, our folktales?"

Henderson and her leadership team, including her co-founder, Harvard economist Roland Fryer, Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone, and Kenya Bradshaw of TNTP, started cooking up the idea in late 2019, and intended to launch in early 2021. But the pandemic and its huge disruptions to education, followed by the racial justice upheaval last summer, pushed them to get started this past fall.

Reconstruction.us is a for-profit startup that offers live video classes over Zoom. They range from soul food cooking, to Black feminism, to the tradition of West African griot - oratory and storytelling skills. There's even a class called Black Shakespeare, where readers explore themes like migration and slavery in plays like Othello and The Tempest.

The classes cost $10 for each one-hour Zoom session, typically 10 sessions to a class. They've hired hundreds of tutors and signed up several thousand students so far.

Nia Warren, one of the tutors on the platform, is taking a gap year from Harvard and teaching a literature course. "One of my classes was all Black girls, and that made me so happy because I never had a black female teacher," she said.

When she was growing up, Warren says, she didn't get to see herself reflected in history class, either. "I didn't get to hear a lot about the things that black people did, besides, like, Martin Luther King and these token figures."

Eleven-year-old Zoe Cobb lives in Chicago, where she's going to school remotely. She loved her Reconstruction literature course, "even though it was another Zoom, which i was originally not a big fan of."

She read Ghost Boys, by Jewell Parker Rhodes, about a young boy killed by police, which introduces characters like Emmett Till. Cobb calls it "kind of like a book club filled with kids of color," from all over the country, some of whom have become her friends.

Henderson says Reconstruction was always intended to be an extracurricular program. But with the pandemic pushing so much education online, they've been partnering with school districts, and offering courses free to students, including on math and reading. "We felt like there were ways to take the academic standards and content and bring them alive in a blackity-black way."

For example, in a math class, they ask students to pretend they are running the Black Panthers' free-breakfast program: "Planning for how many chairs you need, how many meals you need. What happens if more kids come or less kids come?" For Henderson's part, she's hoping a lot more kids come to get what they're dishing out.

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When you think of the history of Black education in the United States, you might think of Brown vs. Board of Education and the fight to integrate public schools. But there's a parallel history too, of Black people pooling their resources to educate and empower themselves independently.

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Charles White (and Harry Belafonte colab.)

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Charles White (and Harry Belafonte colab.)

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"Art must be an integral part of the struggle," Charles White insisted. "It can't simply mirror what's taking place. ... It must ally itself with the forces of liberation." Over the course of his four-decade career, White's commitment to creating powerful images of African Americans-what his gallerist and, later, White himself described as "images of dignity"-was unwavering. Using his virtuoso skills as a draftsman, printmaker, and painter, White developed his style and approach over time to address shifting concerns and new audiences. In each of the cities in which he lived over the course of his career-Chicago, New York, and, finally, Los Angeles-White became a key figure within a vibrant community of creative artists, writers, and activists.

White's far-reaching vision of a socially committed practice attracted promising young artists, including many artists of color, and he became one of the 20th century's most important and dedicated teachers. Acclaimed contemporary artists David Hammons and Kerry James Marshall were among his many students: as Marshall reflected, "Under Charles White's influence I always knew that I wanted to make work that was about something: history, culture, politics, social issues. ... It was just a matter of mastering the skills to actually do it."

Charles White: A Retrospective is the first major museum survey devoted to the artist in over 30 years. The exhibition charts White's full career-from the 1930s through his premature death in 1979-with over 100 works, including drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, illustrated books, record covers and archival materials.

In the audio below, hear WQXR radio host Terrance McKnight's conversation with Harry Belafonte about his relationship with Charles White and their commitment to celebrating and advancing black culture. McKnight also paired music and other audio with selected works from the exhibition, and you can scroll down to listen to his full playlist.

Charles White: A Retrospective is organized by Esther Adler, Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints; and Sarah Kelly Oehler, Field-McCormick Chair and Curator of American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago.

Prior to its MoMA presentation, the exhibition will be on view at The Art Institute of Chicago from June 8 through September 3, 2018. Following its MoMA presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be on view from February 17 through June 9, 2019.

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Exhibition. Oct 7, 2018-Jan 13, 2019. "Art must be an integral part of the struggle," Charles White insisted. "It can't simply mirror what's taking place. ... It must ally itself with the forces of liberation." Over the course of his four-decade career, White's commitment to creating powerful images of African Americans-what his gallerist and, later, White himself described as "images of dignity"-was unwavering.

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17 popular artists (list from Art of Ed)

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17 popular artists (list from Art of Ed)

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Documentary: Black Art - In The Absence of Light

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Documentary: Black Art - In The Absence of Light

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Tools to help you reflect on the film, research further, and apply your knowledge.

Tap into your creative instincts and develop your own unique style.

Artist Amy Sherald's official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama became a symbol for the power of representation.

Artist Jordan Casteel and curator Kimberly Drew discuss the significance of Black art, Black artists in American culture and the importance of Sam Pollard's HBO documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light.

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Tools to help you reflect on the film, research further, and apply your knowledge. Tap into your creative instincts and develop your own unique style. Artist Amy Sherald's official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama became a symbol for the power of representation.

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Book: African American Art - The Long Struggle

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Book: African American Art - The Long Struggle

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African American Art: The Long Struggle [Britton, Crystal A.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. African American Art: The Long Struggle

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Art 21 Video Playlist: Portraying the Black American Experience

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Art 21 Video Playlist: Portraying the Black American Experience

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Portraying the Black American Experience - Art21

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An artist's identity and experiences implicitly inform, and in some cases even drive, the work they create.

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When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing a theme to focus the attention of the public. The intention has never been to dictate or limit the exploration of the Black experience, but to bring to the public's attention important developments that merit emphasis.

For those interested in the study of identity and ideology, an exploration of ASALH's Black History themes is itself instructive. Over the years, the themes reflect changes in how people of African descent in the United States have viewed themselves, the influence of social movements on racial ideologies, and the aspirations of the black community.

The changes notwithstanding, the list reveals an overarching continuity in ASALH-our dedication to exploring historical issues of importance to people of African descent and race relations in America.

2023 THEME
2023 - Black Resistance
African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores. These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic society in the United States and beyond the United States political jurisdiction. The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in the United States was defined by actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walk outs, strikes by Black people and white allies in the fight for justice against discrimination in all sectors of society from employment to education to housing. Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Systematic oppression has sought to negate much of the dreams of our griots, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and our freedom fighters, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer fought to realize. Black people have sought ways to nurture and protect Black lives, and for autonomy of their physical and intellectual bodies through armed resistance, voluntary emigration, nonviolence, education, literature, sports, media, and legislation/politics. Black led institutions and affiliations have lobbied, litigated, legislated, protested, and achieved success.

In an effort to live, and maintain and protect economic success Black people have organized/planned violent insurrections against those who enslaved them, such as in Haiti,, and armed themselves against murderous white mobs as seen in Memphis, TN (1892), Rosewood, FL (1923), and New Orleans, LA (1900). Additionally, some Black people thought that the best way to resist was to self-liberate as seen by the actions those who left the plantation system, of Henry Adams and Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, when they led a mass exodus westward in 1879 and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who organized emigration to Liberia.

Black faith institutions were spaces where Black communities met to organize resistance efforts, inspired folk to participate in the movements, and offered sanctuary during times of crisis. To promote awareness of the myriad of issues and activities media outlets were developed including radio shows, podcasts, newspapers (i.e. Chicago Defender, Chicago Bee, the Afro, The California Eagle, Omaha Star, the Crisis, etc.). Ida B. Wells used publications to contest the scourge of lynching. These outlets were pivotal in sharing the successes and challenges of resistance movements.

Cultural centers such as libraries including George Cleveland Hall Library (Chicago, IL), Dart Hall (Charleston, SC) and social, literary, and cultural clubs, such as Jack and Jill, Phillis Wheatley Literary Societies, fraternal and sororal orders, associations (i.e. Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, National Association of Colored Women, etc.) worked to support the intellectual development of communities to collect and preserve Black stories, sponsor Black history and literature events, and were active in the quest for civil, social, and human rights.

Black medical professionals worked with others to establish nursing schools, hospitals, and clinics in order to provide spaces for Black people to get quality health care, which they often did (and do not) receive at mainstream medical institutions. For economic and financial independence businesses, such as Binga Bank, Johnson Publishing Company, Parker House Sausage Company, Soft and Sheen, etc., were developed to keep funds within the community. In order to resist inequality and to advocate for themselves Black men and women formed labor unions based on trades and occupations, some examples, include the Colored National Labor Union, Colored Musicians Club, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and Negro American Labor Council.

Education, whether in elementary, secondary, or higher education institutions have been seen as a way for Black people and communities to resist the narrative that Black people are intellectually inferior. When Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week (NHW) in 1926, he saw it as a way to provide a space and resources to critically educate students about their history. The grassroots network of Black teachers used this week not only to lionize individuals and narratives, but also to teach students about racial progress, and as well as shared and collective responsibility. They developed assignments and curriculum to provide students with the tools to succeed. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), were developed by Northern white philanthropists, but they emerged as a space for the formation of activists, artists, business owners, educators, etc. and their continued operation have stood as testament to Black investment and creative thinking in the face of the changing landscape of higher education. Furthermore, students at HBCUs were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movements, and social justice movements from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries.

African American spirituals, gospel, folk music, hip-hop, and rap have been used to express struggle, hope, and for solidarity in the face of racial oppression. Music has been used to illustrate societal issues including white and state sanctioned violence (i.e. Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit), sexual politics (i.e. Salt-N-Pepa's Let's Talk About Sex), as motivation, for strength against harassment, and to experience freedom. The Black artists, writers, photographers, and musicians who participated in the Black Arts Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Chicago Black Renaissance were the soundtrack and the visual representation of resistance movements. These individuals created art that supported the resistance movements, but also provided a space for Black people to express love and joy. Creatives used poetry, fiction, short stories, plays, films, and television to counter stereotypes and to imagine a present and future with Black people in it.

Sports are a world pastime, and it both brings people together and separates them. Black athletes have used sports as a way to advocate for social issues and for political agendas. Serena Williams, Flo Jo, Jesse Owens, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Jackie Robinson, Colin Kaepernick, Simone Biles, and many others have used their public forum to bring awareness to issues that affect society as they resisted the idea that they cannot or should not speak about political, cultural, or social issues. Black athletic activists have often suffered personal and economic consequences due to their stances, speech, and actions, but to them it has been worth it to see changes.

Historically and today in the 21 st century, Black people have worked the political angle to seek their rightful space in the country. Where race is concerned, legislative or judicial action to deal with controversial issues has often come late. The historic Executive Orders 8802 and 9346 were responses to A. Phillip Randolph and the all-Black March on Washington Movement's threat to lead a 50,000-strong Black worker's march into Washington, D.C. And all three of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act were concessions to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Every advance, improvement in our quality of life and access to the levers of power to determine our destiny has been achieved through struggle. John Lewis advised, "Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

Lewis' advice is true not just for the 21st century, but also during the antebellum period, as seen in the narratives of the enslaved, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, to testimonials about lynchings and ongoing police violence against African Americans. With the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, and thousands of other Black women, men, and trans people there are new movements (i.e. #Sayhername) and organizations (i.e. Black Lives Matter) that are pushing for the justice system to investigate police involved shootings and white supremacist vigilantes. Nearly 179 years ago, the Rev. Henry Highland Garnett proposed that the only path to freedom, justice, and equality; self-determination; and/or social transformation is resistance. In thunder tones, Garnett shouted, "Let your motto be resistance! resistance! RESISTANCE!

By resisting Black people have achieved triumphs, successes, and progress as seen in the end of chattel slavery, dismantling of Jim and Jane Crow segregation in the South, increased political representation at all levels of government, desegregation of educational institutions, the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964, the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History in DC and increased and diverse representation of Black experiences in media. Black resistance strategies have served as a model for every other social movement in the country, thus, the legacy and importance of these actions cannot be understated.

As societal and political forces escalate to limit access to and exercise of the ballot, eliminate the teaching of Black history, and work to push us back into the 1890s, we can only rely on our capacity to resist. The enactment of HR 40, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Breathe Act, and the closure of the racial wealth gap is not the end. They too will require us to mobilize our resources, human and material, and fight for "freedom, justice, and equality"; "self-determination", and/or "social transformation."

This is a call to everyone, inside and outside the academy, to study the history of Black Americans' responses to establish safe spaces, where Black life can be sustained, fortified, and respected.

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When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing a theme to focus the attention of the public. The intention has never been to dictate or limit the exploration of the Black experience, but to bring to the public's attention important developments that merit emphasis.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Created for 3rd - 12th grade students and educators, the book selections, comprised of non-fiction and fiction, are curated to provide enrichment about African American history and culture based on the permanent and temporary exhibitions within the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

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Created for 3rd - 12th grade students and educators, the book selections, comprised of non-fiction and fiction, are curated to provide enrichment about African American history and culture based on the permanent and temporary exhibitions within the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

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NMAAHC: Knowing the Past Opens the Door to the Future

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NMAAHC: Knowing the Past Opens the Door to the Future

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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This impatience led Woodson to create Negro History Week in 1926, to ensure that school children be exposed to black history. Woodson chose the second week of February in order to celebrate the birthday of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is important to realize that Negro History Week was not born in a vacuum. The 1920s saw the rise in interest in African American culture that was represented by the Harlem Renaissance where writers like Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglass Johnson, Claude McKay-wrote about the joys and sorrows of blackness, and musicians like Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Jimmy Lunceford captured the new rhythms of the cities created in part by the thousands of southern blacks who migrated to urban centers like Chicago. And artists like Aaron Douglass, Richard Barthe, and Lois Jones created images that celebrated blackness and provided more positive images of the African American experience.

Woodson hoped to build upon this creativity and further stimulate interest through Negro History Week. Woodson had two goals. One was to use history to prove to white America that blacks had played important roles in the creation of America and thereby deserve to be treated equally as citizens. In essence, Woodson-by celebrating heroic black figures-be they inventors, entertainers, or soldiers-hoped to prove our worth, and by proving our worth-he believed that equality would soon follow. His other goal was to increase the visibility of black life and history, at a time when few newspapers, books, and universities took notice of the black community, except to dwell upon the negative. Ultimately Woodson believed Negro History Week-which became Black History Month in 1976-would be a vehicle for racial transformation forever.

The question that faces us today is whether or not Black History Month is still relevant? Is it still a vehicle for change? Or has it simply become one more school assignment that has limited meaning for children. Has Black History Month become a time when television and the media stack their black material? Or is it a useful concept whose goals have been achieved? After all, few-except the most ardent rednecks - could deny the presence and importance of African Americans to American society or as my then-14 year old daughter Sarah put it, "I see Colin Powell everyday on TV, all my friends-black and white-are immersed in black culture through music and television. And America has changed dramatically since 1926-Is not it time to retire Black History Month as we have eliminated white and colored signs on drinking fountains?" I will spare you the three hour lesson I gave her.

I would like to suggest that despite the profound change in race relations that has occurred in our lives, Carter G. Woodson's vision for black history as a means of transformation and change is still quite relevant and quite useful. African American history month, with a bit of tweaking, is still a beacon of change and hope that is still surely needed in this world. The chains of slavery are gone-but we are all not yet free. The great diversity within the black community needs the glue of the African American past to remind us of not just how far we have traveled but lo, how far there is to go.

While there are many reasons and examples that I could point towards, let me raise five concerns or challenges that African Americans - in fact - all Americans - face that black history can help address:

The Challenge of Forgetting

You can tell a great deal about a country and a people by what they deem important enough to remember, to create moments for - what they put in their museum and what they celebrate. In Scandinavia - there are monuments to the Vikings as a symbol of freedom and the spirit of exploration. In Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis celebrated their supposed Aryan supremacy through monument and song. While America traditionally revels in either Civil War battles or founding fathers. Yet I would suggest that we learn even more about a country by what it chooses to forget - its mistakes, its disappointments, and its embarrassments. In some ways, African American History month is a clarion call to remember. Yet it is a call that is often unheeded.

Let's take the example of one of the great unmentionable in American history - slavery. For nearly 250 years slavery not only existed but it was one of the dominant forces in American life. Political clout and economic fortune depended on the labor of slaves. And the presence of this peculiar institution generated an array of books, publications, and stories that demonstrate how deeply it touched America. And while we can discuss basic information such as the fact that in 1860 - 4 million blacks were enslaved, and that a prime field hand cost $1,000, while a female, with her childbearing capability, brought $1,500, we find few moments to discuss the impact, legacy, and contemporary meaning of slavery.

In 1988, the Smithsonian Institution, about to open an exhibition that included slavery, decided to survey 10,000 Americans. The results were fascinating - 92% of white respondents felt slavery had little meaning to them - these respondents often said "my family did not arrive until after the end of slavery." Even more disturbing was the fact that 79% of African Americans expressed no interest or some embarrassment about slavery. It is my hope that with greater focus and collaboration Black History Month can stimulate discussion about a subject that both divides and embarrasses.

As a historian, I have always felt that slavery is an African American success story because we found ways to survive, to preserve our culture and our families. Slavery is also ripe with heroes, such as slaves who ran away or rebelled, like Harriet Tubman or Denmark Vessey, but equally important are the forgotten slave fathers and mothers who raised families and kept a people alive. I am not embarrassed by my slave ancestors; I am in awe of their strength and their humanity. I would love to see the African American community rethink its connection to our slave past. I also think of something told to me by a Mr. Johnson, who was a former sharecropper I interviewed in Georgetown, SC:

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Knowing the Past Opens the Door to the Future: The Continuing Importance of Black History Month

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This impatience led Woodson to create Negro History Week in 1926, to ensure that school children be exposed to black history. Woodson chose the second week of February in order to celebrate the birthday of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is important to realize that Negro History Week was not born in a vacuum.

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This resource need to be taught in the context of changing language and context across the decades. Some early exhibitions feature outdated and stereotypical language.

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An incomplete history of MoMA and MoMA PS1, as told through objects in the archives.

We're sorry but this web feature doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.

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An incomplete history of MoMA and MoMA PS1, as told through objects in the archives. We're sorry but this web feature doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.

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Portland Art Museum & Northwest Film Center at home.

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Elizabeth Catlett created these lithographs in honor of Margaret Walker's seminal poem "For My People." Rather than illustrating the poem literally, Catlett transforms Walker's powerful words about Black experience into iconic images. Together, Catlett's words and Walker's text explore hope and despair, as well as the simple joys of life. Writing and visual art so often inspire one another. We invite you to see what these pieces inspire in you.

First, read " For My People " by Margaret Walker. Find a line in the piece that speaks to you and use it as a prompt for your own writing.

We also have two prompts here. As always, you can choose one, both, or write whatever else comes. Just set a timer for 10 minutes and keep your pen moving.

My favorite childhood game... / I dance because...

Writing in community is powerful. We are grateful to our longtime partner Write Around Portland for the writing prompts and inspiration. You can revisit past Sunday posts and look for continuing weekly posts through the winter. Please share your work with us! @writearoundpdx @portlandartmuseum #RespectWritingCommunity #WriteAroundPAM

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Write Around PAM: Elizabeth Catlett - Portland Art Museum & Northwest Film Center at home.

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Elizabeth Catlett created these lithographs in honor of Margaret Walker's seminal poem "For My People." Rather than illustrating the poem literally, Catlett transforms Walker's powerful words about Black experience into iconic images. Together, Catlett's words and Walker's text explore hope and despair, as well as the simple joys of life.

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Civil Rights & Civil Wrongs: the Black History of Portland, OR

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Civil Rights & Civil Wrongs: the Black History of Portland, OR

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PAM Exhibition (Previous): Color Line -- Black Excellence on the World Stage

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PAM Exhibition (Previous): Color Line -- Black Excellence on the World Stage

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Main Building, Floor LL, LL3
In an exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Du Bois presented a remarkable portrait of African American life. A selection of these photographs and data charts at the Museum invites visitors to critically engage with the visual dynamics of race.
At the International Exposition of 1900 in Paris, American sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois put together "The American Negro Exhibit," a remarkable collection of more than 300 photographs of African-American men and women, homes, churches, businesses, and universities. These photographs were paired with a series of charts and graphs designed by Du Bois to visualize data about the descendants of former slaves in the United States. The exhibit directly challenged racist stereotypes and notions of racial segregation that were pervasive at the time. As part of this exhibit in Paris, Du Bois presented his prophetic and poetic statement, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line"-a problem of the human condition that remains unresolved to this day.

Combating these effects on a personal level, the photographs tell a story of beauty, strength, excellence, and-most poignantly of all-humanity. Collaborating with Booker T. Washington and Thomas Calloway, Du Bois chose images meant to showcase the presence, progress, and excellence of African Americans who, at the time, represented the first generation after slavery. Through his data visualizations, Du Bois used the striking visual language of bright colors and bold lines to convey the "color line" to a European audience. The exhibit won a gold medal at the Paris 1900 Exposition and is now part of the collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

This summer, a selection of these photographs and data charts from Du Bois's "The American Negro Exhibit" will be reproduced and placed on view here at the Museum, along with a reading room space and additional resources. Developed by a project team of staff across departments including Alex Haynes, Rene Deras, Adam Garcia, John Goodwin, Grace Kook-Anderson, Ella Ray, Ted Smith, and Jeremiah Wyatt, Color Line invites visitors to critically engage with the visual dynamics of race at the moment of the 1900 Paris Exposition and beyond.

"The main influence for this project is the humanity that lies within framing one's own personal history," remarks Alex Haynes, who works in the Museum's Learning and Community Partnerships department and was a member of this exhibition's project team. "After running into dead ends when researching my own family history, I began to increasingly value oral histories and photographs that came from my grandparents and family members. There's something personal and beautiful to the way that Du Bois documented and showcased the excellence of the first generation of African Americans after slavery. My hope is to bring that narrative to the forefront and emphasize how much that display of culture and humanity still means, more than 100 years later."

View and search the entire collection of 553 photographs, data charts, and documents through the Library of Congress.

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Color Line: Black Excellence on the World Stage - Portland Art Museum

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In an exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Du Bois presented a remarkable portrait of African American life. A selection of these photographs and data charts at the Museum invites visitors to critically engage with the visual dynamics of ... Continued

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by D. Amari Jackson

" Heaven is where you'll be when you are okay right where you are."

-Sun Ra

Perhaps we've got it all wrong. Perhaps, for far too long, we've believed the story we have told ourselves about ourselves, that self-limiting, redundant account of fear, conformity, and lack. Perhaps Marianne Williamson was right when she told us " Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us ."

Perhaps our vision is too small, too limited. Perhaps the future is bigger than we expect, more expansive than we have been conditioned to believe-vast, impossible, infinite.

If so, what else but art could traverse such an imperceptible space, the gap between our contrived expectations and our infinite potential? Is this not, in fact, what art is ultimately for, for employing the seeable to move beyond the seeable, for deconstructing our socially engineered 'reality' while expanding into higher dimensions to facilitate a collective consciousness previously unimagined?

That said, how do we describe the infinite? What language do we use to effectively express our vision for all its impacted layers and dimensionality? What does such a grand vision look like?

Perhaps this vision is already upon us, shrouded in dystopian imagery and belied by a mass Orwellian dysfunction where up is down, love is hate, freedom is enslavement, and healthcare is anything but. Perhaps it has been here all along. Perhaps we just forgot or, failed to re- member , in an Ausarian sense, to reassemble the pieces of our collective self, our original vision, one not new at all, but cyclical, one foreign yet innate, ancient yet nascent, seasoned yet unborn. Perhaps it is a powerful vision conflating time and space via an Einstein-Rosen bridge and enabling us to anticipate our past, to reminisce upon our future; to look forward to yesterday, to remember tomorrow.

Perhaps, T.S. Eliot envisioned it best:

"We shall not cease from exploration

Between two waves of the sea."

- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

At its essence, art is vision, a reflective portrayal of self, as vibrant or ugly as that may be, of who we aspire to be. Art speaks in imagery, if not words, explaining the inexplicable, envisioning the invisible. Art has ever propelled us forward, particularly in challenging and prophetic times, the times we find ourselves in, the times we simultaneously resisted and hoped for, bearing the change we demand yet fear. These times are simultaneously old and new, tragic and triumphant. The events they bear occur not just outside of us, but within us; they happen not just to us, but through us. And art is ever present, recording our responses, depicting our collective plight, and telling a never-ending story based in image, color, numbers, symbols, layers, Golden Ratios, and Fibonacci spirals.

All is form, as the ancients wisely expressed, and, consistently, art possesses the capacity for interpreting the form of a culture and translating its aesthetic across space and time. Fittingly, such artistic form can save us from drowning, from furiously laboring toward our own demise if we can move beyond the fear, recognize the futility of fighting the riptide and, instead, flow along the perpendicular pathway to our own salvation. Such form has not only saved us in the past but inspired us, nurtured us, even created us. We recognize our historic cultures by the art they produced then left behind, be it the timeless monumental structures and esoteric murals of the Kemites (ancient Egyptians); the rich, cosmologically-inspired attire, innovations, and accessories of the Moors; the loaded, axiomatic adinkra symbols of the Akan; or the black-and-white photographic remnants of the Harlem Renaissance. This interpretive capacity qualifies art as a metalanguage, one informing our collective vision, simultaneously depicting, translating, and facilitating its form and meaning.

With its origins in science fiction, its speculative approach, and its intersections with race, technology, and visual art, perhaps Afrofuturism effectively inhabits such a space. Cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term in the 1993 essay "Black to the Future" to characterize such forward looking, multidisciplinary intersectionality incorporating art, music, literature, and technology. This Sankofan approach-progressing forward while looking back-is far from new. Afrofuturism commonly presents a techno-utopian vision of the future while mining history and race relations for input and inspiration, be it the musical imagery of Sun Ra, George Clinton, Grace Jones, and Missy Elliot; the speculative, conscious literature of Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, and Nnedi Okorafor; the provocative and timeless social critiques of photographer Renee Cox; the heroic, universal sculptures and images of Hebru Brantley; the cosmologically encoded quilts of Sanford Biggers.

Perhaps Afrofuturism effectively speaks to our grand vision, whatever it may be, in an artistic language of the infinite. Perhaps Afrofuturism speaks to our current moment, for all its angst, to wow us and reassure us with images of our multidimensional selves defying gravity, riding a light beam, navigating a wormhole. Imagine the physics of such a breathtaking vision, where art provides its form while theoretical physics details it structure, its infinite dynamics. Imagine what this intersection of art and science, meeting in an Afrofuturistic space, could do, has done, to present us with soaring, more truthful images of ourselves, far beyond the manipulated drama, the bipolar fear-infused politics of the day. Imagine.

"After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well."-Albert Einstein

Perhaps this grand vision and its associated language no longer need be left to the imagination. Over the past two decades, a 'new' paradigm has emerged at the so-called "fringes" of theoretical physics, the marginal position reserved for those who don't conform to the mainstream approach and its politics, further giving form to this language of the infinite and, in an artistic analogy, merging the abstract with the figurative. While the Standard Model-the established framework characterizing the fundamental forces in the universe apart from gravity and classifying all known elementary particles-continues to sag under the weight of its own cosmic flaws, paradoxes, and bureaucracy, a more novel yet ancient approach has emerged. Culled largely from the foundational theories of Nobel Prize winning physicists like Einstein and Paul Dirac, both critics of the 'random' universe later depicted by the Standard Model, and championed most notably by renegade physicist Nassim Haramein, this paradigm positions our universe as fractal and holographic within an infinite yet unified structure reflected in every segment of space, be it cosmic or subatomic, external or internal. Or, as the ancients told us, "As above, so below; as within, so without."

Where the standard approach sees randomness and coincidence, the latter sees patterns, balance, and symmetry. What the former views as Black "empty" space, the latter reveals as a charged, infinitely dense sea of energy connecting at all scales via ubiquitous black holes perpetually radiating and absorbing energy in a toroidal feedback loop. Where the standard approach has matter defining space in a futile search for "the God particle," the latter sees space defining matter into a patterned structure radiating toward cosmic infinity at the macro level, and contracting to infinite singularity at the micro. These dynamics are ever present in nature and the cosmos be it a galaxy, tornado, cyclone, or a hurricane spinning clockwise in one hemisphere and counterclockwise in the other. At the midpoint, a singularity is maintained where the highest velocity of swirling matter and energy surrounds the calm eye, a point of equilibrium and minimal vectoral stability entangled with all other.

Like a master work of art, this connected vision of the universe-verified mathematically by a 2008 Scaling Law -presents elegant symmetrical imagery consistent with Einstein's prophecy that any unified solution in physics be both elegant and beautiful. To be clear, while art can certainly pull from and visualize such an infinite construct, such an infinite construct was pulled from art as our ongoing quest for form, for beauty, has ever been a human tradition in seeking to explain our universe, its mysteries, colors, actions, and movements. Toroidal structures, phi ratios, Fibonacci spirals, octahedrons, pyramids, and spheres have all represented artistically from ancient times to the present, from the walls of tombs to the works of numerous African American artists maintaining the tradition today. Surely, art has told the story from the beginning, these visual connections to a patterned universe ever before us, hidden in plain sight.

"I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos." -Sun Ra

Perhaps some new stories, ones old as time, are waiting to be told. Perhaps African American artists and Afrofuturists will tell these stories, as they always have, with one eye set to the past, the other on our current plight, the third ever attuned to the cosmic, the infinite. And these stories, in turn, will make us better, more whole, as they always have, more capable of moving forward while looking back, to remember our future, anticipate our past, and let us know we possess the universal, God-given power to do so.

Perhaps, in this light, the ultimate role of the artist is to move our human collective beyond our deepest fear, past our current dysfunction, the socially and self-imposed shackles of our mainstreamed minds, to express and advance our simultaneously earthly and cosmic existence, to reconcile the physical with the metaphysical, the quantum with the relativistic, the conscious with the human, the abstract with the figurative, and, in doing so, reclaim the infinite, our universal birthright, before basking once and for all, as if for the first time, in how massive, eternal, and unbound we truly are.

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PERHAPS: Envisioning an Ancient Future through Art, Afrofuturism, and the Fractal-Holographic Universe

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by D. Amari Jackson " Heaven is where you'll be when you are okay right where you are ." -Sun Ra Perhaps we've got it all wrong. Perhaps, for far too long, we've believed the story we have told ourselves about ourselves, that self-limiting, redundant account of fear, conformity, and lack.

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Article: How Afro-Futurism Can Help the World Mend

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Article: How Afro-Futurism Can Help the World Mend

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In a year that's broken the world and shattered reality, imagining Black futures can help plot a pathway to recovery.

A comet strikes New York City, killing almost everyone in sight. A survivor named Jim Davis, a Black man, searches the rubble for others, eventually finding and rescuing a white woman named Julia. They share their shock and grief, soon realizing they might be two of the only remaining people on Earth. The circumstances force Julia to reconsider her pre-comet racism: "How foolish our human distinctions seem-now." Jim and Julia quickly develop an intimate bond.

Soon after, they encounter a group of white men, Julia's fiance among them. They tell her that only New York was destroyed, that the rest of the world remains intact. In an instant, Julia relapses into her pre-comet white life. She's indifferent as her companions hurl racial slurs at Jim. Suddenly he is unimportant to her, and she never looks in his direction again.

So ends "The Comet," a relatively obscure but profoundly consequential short story by W. E. B. DuBois. Though best-known for his searing analyses of history and sociology, DuBois' foray into fantasy in 1920 is among his most reflective works, ruthlessly blunt in its stance on racism's inevitability. Most importantly, "The Comet" helped lay the foundation for a paradigm known as Afrofuturism.

A century later, as a comet carrying disease and social unrest has upended the world, Afrofuturism may be more relevant than ever. Its vision can help guide us out of the rubble, and help us to consider universes of better alternatives.

When most people think of Afrofuturism today, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Wakanda comes to mind, an African country that hides advanced technology from the world. Within Wakanda, Afrofuturism manifests most explicitly in the award-winning fashion and set design, a hypnotic blend of African traditional art and dress, cyberpunk, and space opera.

While highly visible examples like Black Panther certainly qualify, Afrofuturism has more traditionally lived in subgenres of literature, philosophy, music, fashion, and other aesthetics. Dubbing something Afrofuturistic, says renowned sociologist Alondra Nelson, is "very much in the eye of the beholder and this is a good thing. Afrofuturism should be a big tent of expanding borders of the possibilities for Black life." Expansive as it is, Nelson, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and pioneering scholar of Afrofuturism, offered a tidy yet illuminating definition: Afrofuturism describes "visions of the future-including science, technology and its cultures in the laboratory, in social theory, and in aesthetics-through the experience and perspective of African diasporic communities." In all of Afrofuturism's many forms, questions are projected about the Black experience into the future.

As technology is a cultural instrument through which we understand and build the future, Afrofuturistic ideas often involve imaginations or analyses of how technology intersects with Black politics or aesthetics. As Nelson notes, "A facet of Afrofuturism that should not get overshadowed is Black people's longstanding, innovative, and critical engagement with science and technology."

The most resonant and front-facing Afrofuturistic relics are in the arts, namely speculative fiction, music, and fashion. Like DuBois' "The Comet," Afrofuturistic sci-fi grapples with how race and difference manifest in future worlds. This is as true in the 20th century works of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany as it is of the recent novels of N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor. Okorafor has said she didn't read much traditional science fiction growing up because she "couldn't relate to these stories preoccupied with xenophobia, colonization, and seeing aliens as 'others.'" Her African mythology-inspired Binti trilogy and her other works are couched in a different understanding of history, which doubtlessly influences her conception of the future: "My science fiction has different ancestors-African ones."

The most popular Afrofuturist authors write deftly at this margin, where they are just as future-obsessed as their peers, but with different takes on questions about who gets to play which roles in these futures. For example, Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010) is a story about empire and slavery that plays out in a supernatural realm of deities and monsters. Butler's 1979 classic Kindred famously features an African-American writer who travels between modern Los Angeles and a Maryland plantation during the antebellum period.

In music, acts like Sun Ra and Parliament Funkadelic built their looks and sounds on a marriage between Black culture and futuristic iconography. For Afrofuturist artists, technology is an essential part of the sound. Play Parliament's acid-infused take on the Motown sound in "I Bet You" and feel the future course through your veins. "These are masters of craft, originators of new sonic (and therefore social) worlds," says Nelson. "They all break, deform, and remake standard uses of music technology, genre and even expectations of race, gender, and sexuality."

Afrofuturism's importance also transcends the arts, and insofar as it can be described as a political identity or ideology (Nelson and other scholars leave open this possibility), then it provides a lens through which we can view the present and future.

We could have asked the Afrofuturist of 1985 what they thought about the War on Drugs. We could ask those in 1995 about Sub-Saharan Africa's experience with the HIV pandemic, and in 2005 about the War on Terror.

Why do we care about what the Afrofuturist has to say? And why would we suspect that their answers would differ from that of an average futurist? It is because the Black experience is defined by a historical struggle for existence, the right to live, to be considered a person, to be afforded basic rights, in pursuit of (political, social, economic) equality. Because of this, the Afrofuturist can see the parts of the present and future that reside in the status quo's blind spots.

Futurists ask what tomorrow's hoverboards and flying cars are made of. Afrofuturists ask who will build them? And does their commercial use fall out of their utility in military or law enforcement?

Futurists labor over questions about the nature of Android consciousness and empathy. Afrofuturists ask how race might be wired into Android consciousness, whether the android world might be as divided as ours is.

These are simple but nontrivial questions. Their answers contain the necessary details for building science fiction worlds that are truly convincing (which is one of the sole charges of good science fiction), or real worlds that science fiction makes us aspire to.

We can ask analogous questions of modern society, speculating what our world will look like after experiencing a triad of world-changing current events: the largest pandemic in a century, a social movement that challenges the institutions of policing and criminal justice, and an upcoming presidential election that almost certainly serves as a referendum on democracy in the United States (and the legitimacy of white nationalism-driven fascism globally).

We should ask Afrofuturism what it thinks of these events. While the specific answers might enlighten, real insights are found in the act of answering, as it forces us to reconsider and augment our predictions with layers that were missing.

Covid-19 is the curse that keeps on cursing, already taking more than half a million lives globally and nearly 140,000 in the US. The curve's dark bend, however, is not simply in how the virus continues to spread and kill, but in how the pandemic slithers along an insidious path, feeding on misinformation rich in credentialism, charlatanism, pseudoscience, conspiracy, and political propaganda.

The resulting cosmic slop looks more grotesque in July than it was in March. The world is so full of bad messages that make-believe conspiracies go to war with each other on our social media timelines; carpetbaggers storm in with reckless abandon, attacking the public's basic trust in science and information; epidemiologists debate with Silicon Valley technologists, or other scientists, about whether things are getting better or worse; the science of mask-wearing regresses into hapless debates about the definition of "freedom." Amid the torrent, fact-makers and science-defenders struggle to climb from the rubble and stay motivated and engaged.

The race and racism narrative manifested early in the United States leg of the epidemic. The signature is clear: Black and Latino people in the United States are three times as likely to be infected, and twice as likely to die as their white counterparts. The numbers alone still hide the fact that it is racism and structural violence that drive these disparities. Of the pandemic, the Afrofuturist would be of two minds:

They may hope, as with DuBois' naive Jim and Julia, that a disaster may unify us. That is, insofar as SARS-CoV-2 can infect us across whatever groupings, we may conclude that we're all humans, all of us affected by a disease.

The pessimistic part of the Afrofuturist would, however, understand that in-demand technology, including medical technology, will always be relatively unavailable to Black people (unless that technology is for criminal justice purposes). Reports about biases in how ventilators are distributed fits this narrative: When technology is in limited supply, and is tied to survival, Black lives are the last ones spared.

Even worse, a popular interpretation reads that the racial narrative of the early US epidemic fueled the nation's negligent response. That is, excess Black deaths are no call to action. And because the racial divide became the subject of so much early coverage in the American epidemic, it served to calm the nerves of the American majority: If the Black people and Latinos are dying from it, so be it. This notion is, of course, unscientific and a losing strategy for everyone (racism always is), but reality supports the idea that this model is at work.

In that sense, Covid-19 is even more tragic than "The Comet." In DuBois' imagined world, the reader is at least offered a glimpse at the possibility that the disaster unifies us. Covid-19, however, was racialized from the outset, with anti-Asian scapegoating that persists. That it took on a Black and Brown face in the United States immediately left no time for us to even dream of a utopian scenario. In the end, Covid-19 hasn't unified a damn thing.

Black Lives and Cybernetic Cops

While Covid-19 has offered no consistently good news, the Black Lives Matter movement, which reemerged internationally following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, has laid the groundwork for productive, practical conversations about policing and the purpose of criminal justice. Some of the loudest voices have focused on defunding the police, a concept that isn't a slogan, but rather, a set of policy proposals for reconsidering how police departments are organized and financed.

Other criminal-justice related considerations have come along for the ride. In response to the protests, a groundswell of support has grown for limiting the use of facial recognition software. Mathematicians have even urged their colleagues to boycott work on policing algorithms.

While the state of the world may have changed little in the month-plus since the Black Lives Matters protests began, the discourse around the just use of technology is encouraging. Here, we can point to Afrofuturist works like poet and scholar Jackie Wang's "The Cybernetic Cop," a 2018 multimedia performance and essay that uses imagery from 1987's Robocop to articulate the perils of technology-driven policing. As racism is a character in the story, the essay highlights the interaction between modern technology and the unethical trappings of modern policing. It might only have been artful or symbolic, but her essay became much more prescient following the January 2020 arrest of Julian-Borchak Williams, in the first high-profile instance of a mistaken arrest resulting from an error in an algorithm.

Technology-as-instrument-of-control is one of sci-fi's oldest tropes. But it is in how this manifests in policing that the Afrofuturist finds its voice: The technology that we use simply reinforces the lines that humans have already drawn. As America's defining line has always been a racial one, technology often acts to redouble them.

A Pessimist and a Futurist Walk into 2020

While Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests are well underway, the 2020 election season is just rounding into shape. Thinking about events that haven't yet happened is the truest test of any futurist philosophy. The point is not to predict the events exactly, but to ask of our futurism: What possibilities does it offer?

Purely pessimistic takes on the future are unsatisfying because of their poverty. That the racists will win in the long run is a reasonable prediction, but we need more. How will this happen? What will the resistance actually look like? History works like science fiction: We want to know who did what and why they did it, even if we know who wins in the end.

Nelson says that an Afrofuturist lens on today tells us that "dystopia can be an enduring state for Black communities, but that utopia is also always being imagined, embodied, dreamed, and constituted in everyday acts of thriving." The Afrofuturist cannot tell you about the trajectory of an epidemic, predict the future of policing, or an election's outcome. But it can say that, whatever our plights, a better world is possible. And more specifically, that an interaction with technology offers us a route to resistance.

In Covid-19, the Afrofuturist calls on us to think about the use of technology to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Yes, a vaccine is the best public health hope. But what other organic innovations may allow us to subvert the worst consequences? Might the rise of the remote DJ dance party be more than another form of entertainment but also a means of recreating Black spaces in our newly isolated society? Similarly, the emergence of the mask as a defining piece of personal protective equipment presents an opportunity for Afrofuturist fashion designers to fuse their inspiration and creativity with responsible public health behavior. Only months ago, few things sparked fear like a masked Black person. Now it is a symbol of safety, and support of science.

With regards to our efforts to rethink criminal justice and policing, the Afrofuturist says that we should rewire technological devices of control (literally and figuratively) to work in our favor. After all, Black Lives Matter and related hashtag activist movements are strikingly Afrofuturist: They utilize existing technology to amplify their signal and build coalitions. Even more, the use of cameras on mobile phones to record acts of violence is also Afrofuturist. Even though the cameras weren't designed to fuel civil disobedience, we wouldn't be having discussions about how to dismantle corrupt systems in law enforcement without them.

Similar things apply to the global fight against fascism. The Afrofuturist points to Generation Zoom's recent use of TikTok to embarrass a political campaign, as an example of the possibility for technology to facilitate creative protest.

These are radical notions, as technology is often weaponized at the expense of the disenfranchised. But Afrofuturism reminds us that Black culture in much of the world is a remix culture, and liberation emerges from the recombination between our artistic and political ambitions, and whatever tools are at our disposal. When we consider this, Afrofuturism predicts that the events of 2020 will breed new techno-political movements (as it already has), new artistic forms, means of expression, discoveries, and philosophies.

When considered in this light, Afrofuturism can even rescue the Afropessimists from their despair: Yes, some people will always suffer disproportionately from political ineptitude, negligence, and malevolence. But our imagination can offer a pathway for recovery in a post-comet world, and craft realities that are more just and colorful than the ones in your standard fictional utopias.
Photographs: Bettmann/Getty Images; Marvel Studios
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More From WIRED on Covid-19

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How Afrofuturism Can Help the World Mend

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In a year that's broken the world and shattered reality, imagining Black futures can help plot a pathway to recovery.

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Article: Where Does Black History Month Stand in the Art Room?

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Article: Where Does Black History Month Stand in the Art Room?

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Every February, Black History Month gives us a moment to highlight the important contributions of Black artists. Since 1976, when President Gerald R. Ford asked Americans to, "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history," Black History Month has served as a reminder for educators to include diversity in their classrooms. This is a good thing. It's important to highlight history that is too often forgotten or brushed aside.

I value the importance of Black History Month, but I do not observe it in my classroom and I haven't for years. Here's why.

It started with a question.
"Mrs. Purtee, why do we only talk about Black artists in February? "

Ouch. Although this observation wasn't entirely true, it was close enough to make me reflect. I was proud of the units I taught for Black History month. The content was great, the students loved the projects, and I felt good being inclusive. However, this question challenged my ideas about the value of what I was doing. I'd unconsciously been using my participation in Black History Month as a pass to only spend one tenth of the year actively educating about diversity.

Thinking about a new approach, I decided I would include a range of artists in every project. This included Black artists but also any other artist falling outside the white, male-dominated tradition of Western art. I decided that for every project I would share work by three artists with different traits. This seemed challenging at first, but when I went beyond my intro-to-art-history knowledge of "important artists" and looked at current, practicing artists it was very feasible.

When I stopped celebrating Black History Month and started making a habit of showing diverse artists to my students, my teaching improved. Exposing students to different points of view made the content of my lessons richer and students' learning deeper. This month, I'll teach about Black artists, but I will every other month, too. I want my students to know that anyone can be an artist; that artists with something valuable to say come in all ethnicities, races, and genders.

I want my students to know that anyone can be an artist; that artists with something valuable to say come in all ethnicities, races, and genders.

Celebrating Black History Month is good, but actively supporting diversity every day is far better for teaching and learning. If you're looking for some inspiring Black artists to introduce your students to, download the handy guide below.

Download Now
What are your thoughts on Black History Month?
Should it be celebrated in our classrooms?

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Where Does Black History Month Stand in the Art Room? - The Art of Education University

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Every February, Black History Month gives us a moment to highlight the important contributions of Black artists. Since 1976, when President Gerald R. Ford asked Americans to, "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history," Black History Month has served as a reminder for educators [...]

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With all that is happening in the world today, teachers everywhere are reflecting on their curriculum and doing the work to make their classrooms antiracist. A small step we can take is to show the work of more Black artists in our classrooms. In this episode, Tim discusses seventeen of his favorite living Black artists that you should know. Full Episode Transcript Below.

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Transcript

Tim: Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University and I'm your host, Tim Bogatz.

Now the topic that is on everyone's mind right now, and the topic we need to discuss today, are the protests that are taking place all over the country, all over the world and the issues underlying those protests. And honestly, I guess I don't necessarily even need to talk about the protests, I need to talk about the moment as a whole. I need to talk about what is happening in our world and our lives and our culture right now, and how all of those things affect our classroom. Because I think we are seeing a collective shift in the world of education.

Teachers want to know, "What can I do to make my teaching meet the moment we are in? Where do I start educating myself? How do I begin doing the work to make sure that my teaching and my curriculum are not only not racist, but make sure that they are antiracist?

It's not easy work. It's not quick work. Those are not easy questions or quick questions to answer. But I'm hoping here in today's episode, I have an idea that may be a place to get started. It's through the lens of art history. And I know looking at art history is not enough. It's not enough. I know that there is more to be done and the job goes far beyond just the artists that we show to our students. But I think this is a valuable place to start, an entry point that helps us begin to do the work.

I want to do more, both long term and short term. But we're going to begin today with me bringing up my love of art history, again, and talking about some of my favorite living black artists. And my hope is that you can use this list as a jumping-off point, a place to get started as you do your own research, as you educate yourself, as you begin to do the work.

And again, this is just list of my favorite living black artists. And it's just a start. I'll talk really briefly about each of them because I'm limited by time here, but we will have a download for you in the show notes that lists each artist and has a link to an article or an interview or a video where you can learn more about anyone on the list. You can continue to research, promote, amplify, and find amazing artists and share them out. Whether that is on social media, in your classroom, or however you find is the best way to share. So I hope that this list can help you along the way as you begin to do that. Now all of these artists that I'm going to list here come from a Twitter thread that I put together last week. So we'll link to that in the show notes also. So if you want to see photos of the artists or images of the work they create, you can definitely check that out as well.

So our first artist is Mark Bradford. Now, he is just an incredible artist who creates these massive works with just layers upon layers upon layers of incredible work. There's fabric, there's paint, there's just a huge variety of materials. And then he will sand down and dig down and carve down within there to find these incredible abstractions and they look just absolutely beautiful. So I think the thing that's most fascinating about him and the thing that students respond to best is that everything he uses is everyday materials. And he has a quote that says, "If Home Depot doesn't have it, Mark Bradford doesn't need it." And I think that's just fantastic because to be able to create such massive, incredible works with just everyday materials is something that's worth checking out. And my students have always responded really, really well to his work.

Number two is Mickalene Thomas. She creates these huge, I mean like 10-foot tall portraits, with acrylic and enamel. And she loves the rhinestones probably more than any other artists I've ever seen, that's kind of her signature thing, is to add rhinestones to all of her works. And her portraits all sort of have a non ... they all sort of keep an eye toward art history, which I think is really spectacular. Just these large striking portraits with a little bit of bling, a little bit of excitement in the portraits. And I think they're fascinating to look at and really, really powerful pieces.

Number three is Julie Mehretu. She has, again, huge like room size, large scale paintings of abstracted landscapes. They're very expressive, her mark-making is beautiful. It's incredibly expressive. And just seeing all of these layers upon layers in her work with all of these expressive marks. It's really kind of overwhelming if you see them in person, but it's really fascinating to just see the size. And a lot of times when you look at her work, she's on a cherry picker or some sort of machinery that helps her get up to the top of her work because they are so incredibly large. So like if a warehouse has a gallery, that's the size that they need to be. They're just absolutely huge and really fascinating to look at.

Number four is Betye Saar. She does assemblage, she does printmaking. But a huge amount of her work is just beautiful when it comes to storytelling. She is very active politically, has a lot to say in her work and directly confronts racism in a lot of the things that she does. And so I think there are a lot of learning opportunities when you look at her work. Just a lot of really good stuff there with context and starting conversations and being able to use her work as something that's teachable. I think there's a lot there.

Number five is Nick Cave. You probably know his sound suits, which are just these giant sculptural wearable pieces that are full of color and fabric and excitement and beauty. And the New York Times described him as the most joyful artist in America, and I can't really say anything better than that. Just his work makes, I think everyone who sees it just incredibly happy. So if you can find some photos or some videos of his sound suits in action, they are just absolutely spectacular.

Number six, Rashid Johnson. I first found out about him, I think I saw online some drawings that he was doing and paintings that he was doing that has to do with anxiety and some of the emotions that kind of came with that. And then as I looked a little bit more at his work, it's just so diverse. He does so many things. 2D work, he does 3D work, he creates installations, he does video, he does everything. And he does a lot dealing with racial and cultural identity, dealing with contemporary issues and social issues. Just a lot to dive into with his work. A lot to see there.

Number seven is Sam Gilliam. He pushes the envelope with paintings and fibers. I don't know the right word for his work, the best I can come up with is tapestries. But basically he'll just put canvas or fabric or whatever on the floor and create these beautiful paintings. They're just so colorful, so expressive. It's all abstract, but there's just so much beauty in there. Just he's a master of how he combines and uses colors. And then he will take that fabric or that canvas and then hang it up, which sort of turns it into this sculptural piece. And so it really blurs the line between, "Is this a 2D painting? Is this a 3D sculpture?" And it's fascinating to look at and gives you a lot of opportunities for discussion about what art is and how we think of the different types of art that we create.

Number eight is Kara Walker. I think everybody's familiar with Kara Walker, but she creates these beautiful black paper silhouettes, a lot of times taking up an entire room. And her subject matter explorers the issues of identity and race and gender and sexuality and even violence. Just an eye toward history, an eye toward the wrongs of the past and sort of memorializing those in very simple, but very, very powerful way. My kids always respond very well to her work. I think it's something that you need to preview. You need to make sure your kids are ready for because those issues are heavy. But it goes back to that sort of idea on, how do we learn about this stuff? How do we discuss these things with our kids? And it's up to us to do the work and figure out the best ways to converse with all of those things.

Number nine, Carrie Mae Weems, just one of the most incredible photographers working today. Honestly, one of the most incredible photographers in art history. Her portraits, her narrative, her storytelling that she comes through with her art is nothing short of amazing. I love everything, I think everything that she's ever done. So if you're into photography, you need to know and you need to shout out Carrie Mae Weems. She is amazing.

Number ten, Martin Puryear. He is a sculptor who keeps an eye on craft and traditional types of making, traditional materials. But he also challenges those materials to create these really evocative sculptures, these one-of-a-kind sculptures where things will be made of strips of wood, but yet he makes that word curve and bend in ways that wood is not supposed to curve and bend. And it creates these fascinating sculptures. And so whether you're talking about craft or process or a finished product, there's a lot to love there and a lot to look at in his work.

Number eleven is Maya Freelon. She creates these huge sculptural pieces using tissue paper and sometimes fabric. But just this beautiful texture and color that makes these very vibrant works. She's young, she's exciting, creates really, really cool things. And I think comparing and contrasting her work with Sam Gilliam makes for a really good discussion. Just kind of seeing how they use color, how they challenge materials, how they put things together is really, really worthwhile.

Number twelve, Glenn Ligon. If you are looking to talk about ideas and process and concepts, Glenn Ligon is perfect. He's a conceptual artist. He deals with race and sexuality and he brings in so many different ideas from other subject areas, history and literature and language. And his use of text is absolutely incredible. And so just being able to explore some of his ideas are going to be really worthwhile in your classroom.

Hey, number thirteen is Kehinde Wiley. I don't know how many times I've talked about Kehinde Wiley on my podcast. Maybe my favorite artist working today. Just these huge hyper-realistic beautiful portraits with beautiful backgrounds that celebrate black identity, that celebrate black culture while giving us a really significant critique of art history. And so there's no limit to the number of things that you can discuss with Kehinde Wiley's works. My kids have always responded so well to everything that he's done. And it opens so many avenues to discuss art history and how black identity, how black culture can fit within art history. Just listening to interviews with him, watching videos about him, just hearing him talk about his work is really, really powerful. And of course he did Obama's official presidential portrait, which is an incredibly famous work. So even if that's your starting point with your students, it's a great way to dive in and explore a little bit more.

Number fourteen is Kerry James Marshall. Just a beautiful portfolio of paintings that attempt to capture the black experience. Honestly, over the last 50 years or so 60 years from civil rights movement up to contemporary culture. Just this beautiful way of documenting what life looks like. And yeah, kids relate to those things very well. It's very stylized, it's very accessible and just really, really beautiful work. And I believe Kerry James Marshall also has murals up around the country, the one I'm thinking of I believe it's in Chicago. And just being able to show kids some of his bigger work there is absolutely worth your time.

Number fifteen, Faith Ringgold. A while back Faith Ringgold was the keynote presenter at our Art Ed Now Conference. This was a while ago, I want to say like 2014, 2015. But she was an absolute riot, she was incredible to talk to. And she has such a long history as an artist and she's done so many things. She is a painter, a writer, a sculptor, she does mixed media work. And I think what she's most known for are her iconic quilts. I think everyone is familiar with tar beach. And if you're not, you need to familiarize yourself with it. Just really powerful work, really powerful narratives and storytelling. And it's absolutely something that you need to check out and something that you need to show your students.

Number sixteen is Amy Sherald. She has this very unique portrait style and just breaks with a lot of traditions and creates this very unique work. And I'm fascinated by it. I love looking at everything that she's done. She was at the NAEA conference in Boston, I believe the national conference, and listening to her speak about her work was fascinating. She was a wonderful speaker, she had a lot of great stories and gave me a lot of insight into kind of her process and her work and made me appreciate it a little bit more. And she actually did Michelle Obama's official portrait, the first lady. And so that's a really, really good one. And again, a great entry point if you want to introduce her to your students.

And seventeen is Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. And she does these beautifully realistic portraits and street art. Just huge, huge works that are fascinatingly realistic. And she had an entire campaign called Stop Telling Women to Smile and it paired these wonderful portraits and realistic drawings with really important phrases that kind of make you think about behavior, about how we treat women, about how we objectify women. Just the one I'm thinking of has a portrait of, I believe three different women. The text below says, "Harassing women does not prove your masculinity." And it's an entire series like that which is really powerful. And again, leads you into so many issues that you can discuss, that you can talk about with your students.

And so those are my 17. It's a lot, but honestly it's just scratching the surface. I think if we can use that as a jumping-off point, you can continue to explore. You can continue to find the artists that speak to you, that will speak to your students and share them out however you can do that. Okay. Like I said, I appreciate you listening to some of my thoughts. I appreciate you listening to my ideas and my artists that I really love and really appreciate. And like I said, now it's time to do the work. It's time to explore. It's time to find artists and share artists. And there's a long way to go. But finding and sharing can be the first step because we're going to work to meet the moment. We are going to work to educate ourselves and we're going to work to make our teaching antiracist.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you for listening, as always. I am hoping that we can continue the learning and continue to do the work next week. We'll talk to you then.

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17 Black Artists to Know (Ep. 222) - The Art of Education University

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With all that is happening in the world today, teachers everywhere are reflecting on their curriculum and doing the work to make their classrooms antiracist. A small step we can take is to show the work of more Black artists in our classrooms. In this episode, Tim discusses seventeen of his favorite living Black artists [...]

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Artist Talk: Afro-Futurist Michael Bernard Stevenson, JR

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Artist Talk: Afro-Futurist Michael Bernard Stevenson, JR

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Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.

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Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.

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As guardian to Artist Matoska I have become increasingly interested in creating an environment and set of collaborative parameters that will allow my faithful companion to further explore their artistic interests and creative potential. To this end we've spoken with three animal parapsychologists to help develop my understanding of Artist Matoska's voice.