First-of-Its-Sort Exhibition Explores Photography’s Position within the Black Arts Movement

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is presenting the primary exhibition to discover pictures’s affect on a cultural and aesthetic motion that celebrated Black historical past, identification, and wonder.

The exhibition, titled Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985, focuses on the contributions of American and Afro-Atlantic diaspora photographers in creating a definite Black visible tradition and identification. This is the primary exhibition to particularly discover pictures’s function inside the Black Arts Movement, a inventive initiative with affect similar to the Harlem Renaissance, which developed alongside the civil rights and worldwide freedom actions.

The exhibition highlights the methods artists used pictures to have interaction communities and promote self-representation, establishing approaches to socially engaged artwork that proceed to affect up to date practices.

“Photography and photographic images were crucial in defining and giving expression to the Black Arts Movement and the civil rights movement. By merging the social concerns and aesthetics of the period, Black artists and photographers were defining a Black aesthetic while expanding conversations around community building and public history,” Deborah Willis, visitor co-curator, college professor and chair of the division of pictures and imaging on the Tisch School of the Arts and founding director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University, says in a press launch. “The artists and their subjects helped to preserve compelling visual responses to this turbulent time, and their images reflect their pride and determination.”

Photography and the Black Arts Movement presents roughly 150 works, together with items which have not often or by no means been publicly displayed. The exhibition demonstrates the cultural dialogue amongst writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, and visible artists of numerous backgrounds who, through the mid-Twentieth century, addressed social and political change, the battle for civil rights, and the rise of the Pan-African motion via artwork. Photographers are central to this presentation, revealing how visible documentation and inventive expression formed the motion’s identification.

The exhibition additionally options works from Africa, the Caribbean, and Great Britain, situating the Black Arts Movement inside a broader world context of social, political, and cultural change. Photography and the Black Arts Movement will likely be on view within the West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., via January 11, 2026, earlier than touring to venues in California and Mississippi.