African American Heritage Month

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 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.

A one-woman show highlighting the cumulative work of Robin Strayhorn using various mediums. Strayhorn is a multidisciplinary artist residing in Los Angeles for the past 40 years. Some other most recent work reflects time spent living and studying in India. There will be an Artist Talk/Reception on February 9, check the website for details.

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.

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.