African American Heritage Month

Luther Vandross: Artistry and Elegance celebrates the extraordinary life and legacy of Luther Vandross, an eight-time Grammy winner, revered songwriter, arranger, producer, performer, and one of the most gifted vocalists in music history. The exhibit offers an intimate glimpse into Vandross’ creative process and showcases his ornate stage wardrobe, exclusive performance footage from his popular tours, and a never-before-heard recording of him in the studio.

The exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal is inspired by the life and legacy of jazz musician, devotional leader, and mother Alice Coltrane. The title takes its name from her book Monument Eternal (1977), which reflected her newfound spiritual beliefs, the loss of her husband, the saxophonist John Coltrane, and the path to healing and self-discovery. The exhibition presents work by contemporary American artists paired with ephemera from Coltrane’s personal archive.

This moving, seminal visual arts project was conceptualized and developed by the Watts Towers Arts Center Director, Rosie Lee Hooks, who commissioned 13 artists from the community to use shovels as a canvas to honor the legacy of our ancestors. Each of the world-renowned master artists who accepted the challenge has a history of building art institutions in Watts and in the greater Los Angeles area.

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.

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.

The Boyz N the Hood gallery explores the movie’s groundbreaking depiction of Black life in South Central Los Angeles and its lasting impact on popular culture. It spotlights the cast and crew–including Cuba Gooding, Jr., Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Laurence Fishburne, Nia Long, and Angela Bassett–showing the pivotal role the film played not only in their careers but also for a new generation of Black talent in Hollywood.

The Compton Art & History Museum opened to the public this year, just months after its two founders, the husbandand- wife duo Abigail Lopez-Byrd and Marquell Byrd, came together with a vision for the space. “We have archives from Compton from the 1960s and 1970s that the youth can now come and see without having to go to neighboring cities or somewhere deep in LA that don’t represent who they are or where they come from,” says Co-founder Marquell Byrd.

Cuban-born Campos-Pons creates vivid photographs, watercolors, installations, and performances that explore the cultural and personal impacts of migration and memory. Her work reflects the histories of labor affecting her family, emphasizing resilience and honoring her Nigerian and Chinese ancestors. This 35-year survey highlights the interconnectedness between people and their environments, offering a rich, sensory experience.

This public event brings three historians of slavery together—one focused on the importance of slavery to colonial empires, one focused on captive experiences and health in the slave trade, and one focused on the introduction of African maritime culture into the Americas—to wrestle with the question: What actually happened in 1619?

The Intra-American Slave Trade Database is a resource for the study of the African diaspora in the Americas. Launched online in 2018, it documents more than 27,000 voyages that trafficked enslaved Africans and African-descended people from one part of the Americas to another from 1550 to 1860. This database strengthens research throughout the University of California system on the history and impact of the slave trade and slavery in the Americas by connecting scholarship on the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds.