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.

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.

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.

Award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams shares his chaotic, audience-led poetry event. Prompted by audience suggestions, Ellams will instantly search through his archive of work and perform a reactive and spontaneous selection. School matinee performance, grades 6 and up.

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.

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.