Pérez Art Museum Miami. The CCI welcomes submissions for the 2025 Artist, Research, and CCI + WOPHA Fellowships.The Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI) Fellowship program fosters art projects and research that advance cultural development and scholarship in the Caribbean and its diaspora.
by Jessica McQueen, Getty. Precious exhibition ephemera from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, rare photos of Black artist collaborations in Washington, DC. These are among the archival materials housed in libraries, universities, museums, and community centers across the United States—institutions dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of Black art.
Aperture. The second title in Aperture’s Vision & Justice Book Series, created and coedited by Drs. Sarah Lewis, Leigh Raiford, and Deborah Willis, showcases the luminous, wideranging contributions of an essential artist. This long-awaited volume, Simpson’s first, features her celebrated B-Boys series—portraits of young people coming of age during the early years of hip-hop—as well as her experiments with collage and other formal interventions.
Third World Newsreel: African Spiritualities. Granted rare access to Ndeup, a spiritual healing ceremony practiced by Lebou peoples in Senegal, filmmaker and writer Manthia Diawara – with input from a cadre of scientists and academics – wonders what connections, if any, can be made between the possession ritual and Western logic.
by Seph Rodney, HYPERALLERGIC. El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico seeks to serve teachers, children, incarcerated people, and local artists alike, expanding the definition of what a museum can do. But the museum doesn’t only seek to intervene in people’s lives after they have found themselves in irrevocable situations.
Anne Collins Smith was appointed chief curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Smith is the first Black person to lead NOMA’s curatorial department. Smith leads NOMA’s collection and exhibition initiatives and manages the institution’s team of curators, conservators, and collections staff. She is responsible for the museum’s modern and contemporary art presentations, adding significant expertise in African American art.
by Aida Amoako, HYPERALLERGIC. Davis portrayed scenes in which Black people could truly recognize themselves, eschewing stereotypical depictions and imbuing his subjects with a sense of the surreal. In his brief life, Noah Davis both built and revealed worlds, relishing the freedom that comes with “painting to create your own universe,” as he once said “Emphasis on your own.”
by Janet Hill Talbert, aperture. Smith’s poetic and experimental images are icons of twentieth-century Black life. In an interview, she speaks about her life and career—and the transcendent power of photography. After college, she moved to New York to pursue a career as a photographer. In 1979, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased several of Smith’s photographs, making her the first African American female photographer with that distinction.
by Rhea L. Combs, The Brooklyn Rail. In 2024 Tyler Mitchell traveled to coastal Georgia to create a new body of work. He scouted a number of locations, but when he returned to make photographs he gave his subjects minimal direction. Mitchell’s intent was to discover moments occurring naturally, spontaneously, and in that way to create photographs that communicate in a layered, complex fashion.
Last December, Margot Kotler sat down with Alexis Pauline Gumbs to discuss her most recent book, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Macmillan, 2024). They talked about the breadth of Lorde’s life and the need to think on a planetary scale, the collective work of autobiography, and the work of a poet in Black feminist science.