Black Portraiture: Los Angeles The Black Built Environment Black Portraiture: Los Angeles: The Black Built Environment will examine the historicity and rich panoply encompassing the Black built environment, both physical and imagined. Exploring the concept and its relationship to photography, architecture, urban planning, and visual culture, artists have reconceived and reconstructed visions of our built environment while exploring themes conversant with the spiritual and ritualistic continuities of the African diaspora. Moreover, this convening will explore the artistic contributions to forms of memory, visual legacies of Black townships, and the charges of conceived spaces therein. The conference will present and encourage research and scholarship on continuities between modern and contemporary visual and structural approaches, centering the audacity of Black-built environments from within the Diaspora’s politics, architecture, art,...

TCB – the Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing Film Screening Join the Center for Black Visual Culture as welcome filmmaker Louis Massiah for a screening a conversation on TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing. This program is co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora and NYU Arts & Science Department of English.TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 minutes) is a biography of the influential writer, filmmaker and cultural worker, who with humor and deep insight, inspired a generation of artists to dedicate themselves to community empowerment. The film is structured as a series of lessons on cultural organizing, gleaned from Bambara’s life and shared by her friends, colleagues and students. Toni Cade Bambara (1939–1995) was a writer, documentary filmmaker, and activist whose groundbreaking works, including The Black Woman (1970), Gorilla, My Love (1972), and The S...

#IWonderU40 Prince Symposium Join us on April 17–19, 2026 (Friday–Sunday) for #IWonderU40, a *HYBRID* Prince symposium. This is a very special one this year, commemorating two landmark anniversaries: ten years since Prince's passing and forty years since his visionary 1986 releases, the Parade album and his second narrative film Under the Cherry Moon. Save the dates and pre-register now at https://iwonderu40.substack.com. The speaker and schedule at a glance are on the symposium website,  https://iwonderu.polishedsolid.com. This will be our first hybrid symposium, designed to support both our international and local community. Friday • Fully virtual on Zoom Events + YouTube to accommodate our global audience. Saturday and Sunday • In person at NYU Tandon in Brooklyn at 370 Jay St., where we previously celebrated #EroticCity40. The in-person sessions will be livestreamed and posted later on YouTube and/or Vimeo. MASSIVE THANKS t...

Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America The Center for Black Visual Culture and the Asian Pacific American Institute welcome author Jeff Chang and cultural critic Bakari Kitwana to discuss Chang’s new publication Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. This conversation will be followed by a book signing, where copies will be available for purchase.As the best-known martial artist and one of the most celebrated action stars ever, Bruce Lee is a global icon. He symbolizes swagger, strength, and the unbeatable spirit of the underdog. But in more than fifty years since his untimely death at age thirty-two, the legend has eclipsed the real man. During his lifetime, Bruce fought to be seen—from Hong Kong to Hollywood, Asian tenements to American ghettos, the lonely garret to the international screen. He emerged as a star in an era when Asian Americans were fighting against exclusion and invisib...

Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebllious Poet Film Screening Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebellious Poet is a captivating voyage through the 1920s — from Harlem to Marseille, via Jamaica, Russia and Morocco — in the footsteps of Jamaican American writer Claude McKay. A rebellious voice of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay spent two decades traveling the world, immersing himself in artistic and political avant-gardes while building an enduring body of work. This remarkable documentary portrait, illustrated with rare archival footage and photographs, narrated by Gaël Faye, and set to a stirring soundtrack, brings his legacy to life. Film screening of Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebellious Poet (52’ - 2025 - english subtitles) followed by a post-screening discussion and Q&A with French director Matthieu Verdeil. This program is organized by the Center for Black Visual Culture and co-sponsored by NYU Institute of French St...