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In 2019, Lawson answered more than 1,000 questions in his Story File so that future generations can continue conversing with him to learn about his legacy. What would you like to ask Lawson?

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.,
Thursday, 12:00 noon – 8:00 p.m.
Adults – $16, Seniors and Youth – $9, Members and Children under 5 – Free

Mark Bradford’s 150 Portrait Tone, a mural-size composition that contains elements of both abstraction and realism, is based on an idea for a work that the artist conceived after the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a police officer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in July 2016. Castile, a nutrition services supervisor at an elementary school, was shot after being pulled over in his car—an incident that was livestreamed on Facebook by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

The painting features excerpts of Reynolds’s dialogue from the video. The title, 150 Portrait Tone, refers to the name and color code of the pink acrylic used throughout the painting. Like the now-obsolete “flesh” crayon in the Crayola 64 box (renamed “peach” in 1962), the color “portrait tone” carries inherent assumptions about who, exactly, is being depicted. In the context of Bradford’s painting, the title presents a sobering commentary on power and representation.

The Pan African Film & Arts Festival includes America’s largest and most prestigious Black film festival. The event showcases many Black creative works worldwide, highlighting those that reinforce positive images and help destroy negative stereotypes. Nowhere else can audiences find this unique opportunity to come together through film and art to explore new worlds, meet new people, and acquire new information and ideas. In-person and virtual screenings. Check the website for ticket and time information.

This installation features some of the many forms incarceration has taken in the American West over time, in conversation with a new photo series taken in a California state prison by fine art photographer Pep Williams. Located in the jail cell area of the Autry’s firearms galleries, the installation brings past and present into dialogue.

Adults – $14, Students (with current ID) and Seniors (60+) – $10, Children (3–12) – $6

Tuesdays – Fridays 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Saturdays – Sundays 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

George Washington Carver was a pioneer of plant-based engineering and one of the nation’s earliest proponents of sustainable agriculture. In the early 1900s, he built his “Jesup Wagon,” a moveable school to share soil and plant samples, equipment, and other agricultural knowledge with farmers. Carver’s then-radical ideas—including organic fertilizers, crop rotation, and plant-based medicines, and construction materials—are now recognized as the forerunners of modern conservation.

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice considers Black image making as a site of protest, contestation, affirmation, and possibility. At CAAM, Fazlalizadeh will present a series of portraits of Black Angelenos wheat-pasted across the atrium’s monumental walls. Based on photographs and conversations that took place this spring while the artist was living in Los Angeles, the portraits ask how safety is inferred, built, and felt for the city’s Black residents.

Ben Caldwell envisioned cinema as an instrument that could heal and emancipate. In 1984, he opened KAOS Network, the media arts hub that has helped steward Leimert Park Village’s traditions of Black artistry, fellowship, and love for over four decades. This multimedia exhibition explores Caldwell’s varied practices of photography, film, video, music, performance, community-based design, and interactive media and celebrates the creative life and communities of KAOS Network.

The PAFF ArtFEST showcases over 100 established and emerging artists and craftspeople from around the world, focusing on artistic expressions rooted in Africa and its Diaspora. Featured works include oil paintings, watercolors, ceramics, jewelry, fashion, home decor, and more, highlighting both fine art and unique crafts.