African American Heritage Month

Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics fi nds aesthetic connections among 60 artists working in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The exhibition and its catalog are among the first to examine nearly a quarter century of production by Black artists. The project debuts new acquisitions for LACMA and expands the Pan-African exhibition canon, historically focused on the Black Atlantic, by showcasing artists working along the Pacific Rim.

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.

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 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.

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.

America’s suburbs are undergoing significant transformation. The traditional view of suburbs as predominantly white, middle-class areas no longer reflects reality. Today, they encompass a diverse mix of residents—rich and poor, Black, Latino, Asian, immigrants, and the unhoused. This shift is especially evident in Los Angeles, where many suburbs have become majority-minority. The New Suburbia explores the experiences of Asian Americans, Black Americans, and Latinos who moved into formerly exclusive neighborhoods.

In 1759, the Diamond sailed to unspecified ports in the Americas, Jamaica, Panama, Colombia, and more unspecified destinations in what was then known as the Spanish Caribbean, embarking and disembarking human cargo as part of the slave trade. The Diamond serves as an entry point into a discussion of the movement of Africans and African-descended captives to the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea-bordered regions, the ocean memory of those human cargo lost to the voyages through the Americas, and how that loss reverberates into the present.

Stream films on Kanopy or Hoopla, both on-demand streaming film services. They both have an extensive library of African American cinema and documentaries that are free with your Los Angeles City or Los Angeles County library card.

kanopy.com/en/category/40898?frontend=kui

 hoopladigital.com

The Los Angeles Public Library and the Los Angeles County Library cards give you access to many resources, including two amazing online music collections. Freegal features unlimited songs, and Hoopla lets you check out full albums. These two databases have endless amounts of music from the African and African American diaspora to explore, from famous hits to underground sounds.

hoopladigital.com/search?q=African+American+music&scope=everything&type=direct&kindId=6

freegalmusic.com