Photography and the Black Arts Movement

Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson presents “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985,” a landmark exhibition exploring the work of American and Afro-Atlantic diaspora photographers and artists working with pictures in growing and fostering a distinctly Black visible tradition and id. Investigating the medium’s position within the Black Arts Movement, which advanced concurrently with the American civil rights and worldwide freedom actions, the exhibition reveals how artists developed methods to have interaction communities and encourage self-representation through the turbulent a long time of the mid-Twentieth century.

Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the place the exhibition debuted, it’s on view at MMA from July 25 to November 8, 2026. Prior to MMA, Photography and the Black Arts Movement was offered on the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

The exhibition contains roughly 150 works, spanning pictures, video, collage, portray, set up, and different lens-based media, a few of which have not often or by no means been on public view. Among the over 100 artists included within the exhibition are Billy Abernathy (Fundi), Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Frank Bowling, Kwame Brathwaite, Roy DeCarava, Louis Draper, David C. Driskell, Charles Gaines, James E. Hinton, Danny Lyon, Gordon Parks, Adrian Piper, Nellie Mae Rowe, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement is drawn principally from the National Gallery’s assortment—together with greater than 50 newly acquired works by Dawoud Bey, Kwame Brathwaite, Louis Draper, Ray Francis, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Horace Ové, Jamel Shabazz, Malik Sidibé, Ming Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems, amongst others—and from lenders within the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada.

This expansive choice of work showcases the broad cultural change between writers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and different visible artists of many backgrounds, who got here collectively within the mid-Twentieth century to grapple with social and political modifications, the pursuit of civil rights, and the emergence of the Pan-African motion by way of artwork. The exhibition additionally contains artwork from Africa, the Caribbean, and Great Britain to contextualize international engagement with the Black Arts Movement.

Images function distinguished civil rights leaders, artists, and musicians in addition to on a regular basis folks, bringing collectively studio, press, and road pictures with pictures that have been initially created and circulated in vogue, business, political, and journalistic contexts. Structured round thematic sections—together with explorations of group, vogue and wonder, the media, and ritual—the exhibition evokes a holistic imaginative and prescient of the interval, its far-reaching cultural influence, and the breadth and texture of Black id.

Photographs have been an important device used to speak the occasions of the civil rights motion to a nationwide and worldwide viewers. Artists and information media understood the ability of pictures to handle inequality and advocate for civil and human rights. Some works within the exhibition are by photojournalists who captured the speeches, marches, and sit-ins that indelibly recorded and helped outline the period. 

The Black Arts Movement was additionally instrumental in reshaping vogue, promoting, and

media as instruments of self-representation and cultural empowerment, prompting advertisers to have interaction Black audiences extra thoughtfully by hiring Black photographers and fashions of their campaigns.

MMA’s presentation is distinguished by a partnership with Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center, which operates the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Learning Center. COFO was the epicenter of the fashionable civil rights motion in Mississippi and served because the organizational house for Freedom Riders in 1964. It was notably one of many solely initiatives to efficiently unify a coalition of activist organizations within the struggle for civil rights that included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a number of native organizations.

To spotlight COFO’s pivotal contributions to the historical past of civil rights, MMA has produced supplementary wall labels within the exhibition’s part on activism and offers expanded sources on its Bloomberg Connects app. In addition, MMA’s presentation contains not often seen pictures taken at Jackson State University (previously Jackson State College) in 1973, through the inaugural Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, organized by poet Margaret Walker. The pictures seize main Black ladies writers of the Black Arts Movement, together with Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni, who gathered on the competition for readings, conversations, and cultural change.

“Our goal of partnering with COFO and the Margaret Walker Center for this powerful presentation is to amplify the singular role that Mississippi played in galvanizing both the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements,” MMA Associate Curator of Exhibitions Kaegan Sparks stated. “Photographers from Mississippi include Doris Derby and Roy Lewis. Documentation by Bob Fletcher, Doug Harris, Danny Lyon, and Tamio Wakayama vividly portray the aftermath of Freedom Summer and the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964—two civil rights milestones organized by COFO.”

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. It is curated by Philip Brookman, consulting curator of pictures on the National Gallery of Art, and Deborah Willis, college professor and chair of the division of pictures and imaging on the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. The exhibition has been overseen at MMA by Kaegan Sparks, affiliate curator of exhibitions, and Chase Quinn, inventive director and curator of particular tasks.

About the Mississippi Museum of Art

Established in 1911, the Mississippi Museum of Art is devoted to connecting Mississippi to the world and the ability of artwork to the ability of group. The Museum’s everlasting assortment contains work, pictures, multimedia works, and sculpture by Mississippi, American, and worldwide artists. The largest artwork museum within the state, the Mississippi Museum of Art affords a vibrant roster of exhibitions, public packages, inventive and group partnerships, instructional initiatives, and alternatives for change year-round.