LOS ANGELES-AREA MUSEUMS are presenting an array of exhibitions featuring works by Black artists. Exhibitions are exploring Black art history through the lives and work of key African American artists and cultural figures, including Ben Caldwell, Alice Coltrane, George Washington Carver, and Nellie Mae Rowe, each of whom deserve to be more widely known. The Carver and Rowe exhibitions are on view at the California African American Museum, where another show engages directly with American history featuring artworks that incorporate original documents from the eras of enslavement and sharecropping. Contemporary works by Black artists from Africa, Europe, and the Americas are on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and María Magdalena Campos-Pons is the subject of a major solo show at the Getty Museum. A selection of nine exhibitions follows. (Exhibitions are ordered by date, beginning with the most recent opening):
MARIA MAGDALENA CAMPOS-PONS, Detail of “The Calling,” 2003 (diptych of Polaroid Polacolor Pro photographs). | Collection of Jonathan and Barbara Lee. Courtesy of and © María Magdalena Campos-Pons
María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold @ J. Paul Getty Museum, Brentwood, Los Angeles, Calif. | Feb. 18-May 4, 2025
Cuban-born María Magdalena Campos-Pons‘s multidisciplinary practice is informed by her Nigerian and Chinese family heritage and the global histories of labor and displacement. She explores how enslavement, indentured servitude, motherhood, and migration impact individual and collective memory. The 35-year survey features more than 50 works: large-scale photographic grids, immersive installations, paintings, video, and documentation of performance art. An artist and educator, Campos-Pons is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Presented in English and Spanish, the exhibition is the first broad presentation of the artist’s work on the West Coast.
NELLIE MAE ROWE ( 1900–1982), “Untitled (Nellie Mae Making It to Church Barefoot),” 1978–1982 (crayon and pencil on paper, 19 x 23 3/4 inches / 48.3 cm x 60.3 cm; Framed/Mounted: 29 1/4 x 35 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches / 74.3 cm x 89.5 cm x 3.2 cm). | © Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Gift of Judith Alexander, 2003.220
Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe @ California African American Museum, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Calif. | Feb. 17-August 17, 2025
Selft-taught artist Nellie Mae Rowe (1900–1982) decorated her Vinings, Ga., home with handmade dolls, chewing gum sculptures, found-object installations, and hundreds of drawings. A rare look at Rowe’s expressive production, this show features more than 100 works made during the last 15 years of her life. The presentation also includes photography and an outtake from an experimental documentary about Rowe that contextualizes her work and art environment. A fully illustrated catalog accompanies the traveling exhibition, which was organized by and drawn from the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Katherine Jentleson and Dan Boone of the High Museum co-curated the show.
CHELLE BARBOUR, “Surreal Plantation,” 2023 (photomontage, 31 ¼ x 43 ¼ inches, framed). | © Chellle Barbour, Courtesy the artist
Repossessions @ California African American Museum, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Calif. | Feb. 14-Aug. 3, 2025
A plantation map, a ledger listing enslaved persons, Confederate currency, and other original documents dating from the 1860s to early 1900s are the basis of new commissioned artworks by Chelle Barbour, Marcus Brown, Rodney Ewing, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (Olomidara Yaya), and Curtis Patterson. White families who owned the slavery- and sharecropping-era documents gave them to African American artists who developed works in response to the ideas and history embedded in the ephemera. The concept of reparations and “repossession” of the documents is at the root of the presentation organized by independent curator Bridget R. Cooks. The exhibition is an initiative of The Reparations Project in collaboration with Reparations 4 Slavery. Focusing on Black education, Black land preservation, and Black art, The Reparations Project was launched by Susan Eisner and Randy Quarterman, descendants of enslavers and the enslaved in Savannah, Ga.
DAWOUD BEY, “Mississippi River and Trees from the series In This Here Place,” 2019 (gelatin silver print on paper, 17 7/16 x 21 7/8 inches / 44.29 x 55.56 cm). | Published by Dawoud Bey and Stephen Daiter Gallery. Pomona College Collection, Restricted gift of Janet Benton ’79, P2022.7.12
Black Ecologies in Contemporary American Art @ Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, Calif. | Feb. 13-June 29, 2025
Over the past two years, Black Ecologies has been the focus of two academic courses and a speaker series at Pomona College. Now the interdisciplinary field is the theme for a visual art exhibition. Black Ecologies considers the intersection of Black people, land, and the environment and “offers a new frame through which to understand pressing issues such as climate change as well as a new basis for anchoring historical narratives of plantation slavery, urban development, and other facets of racial capitalism.” Works across photography, film, prints, drawings, and sculpture are presented. Exhibiting artists include Dawoud Bey, Tony Gleaton, Todd Gray, Wardell Milan, Alison Saar, and Kara Walker. On Feb. 25, exhibition programming includes Sharing Stories through Food: Honoring Uncredited Culinary Innovators, a workshop with Chef Martin Draluck (founder of Black Pot Supper Club), followed by an opening reception. The exhibition is co-curated by Pomona College professors J Finley and Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, and Benton Museum of Art Director Victoria Sancho Lobis, with intern Tristen Alizée Leone and additional student contributions.
From left, Alice and John Coltrane at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1966. | Courtesy Yasuhiro Fujioka Collection. Photo: Hozumi Nakadaira; JASPER MARSALIS, “Event 3,” 2020 (oil on canvas. 60 × 80 inches / 152.4 × 203.2 cm). | Courtesy of the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox
Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal @ Hammer Museum at UCLA, Westwood, Los Angeles, Calif. | Feb. 9-May 4, 2025
“Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal” is the first museum exhibition dedicated to the legacy of Alice Coltrane (1937-2007), the devotional leader and jazz museum who expressed herself across an array of musical genres. The title of the exhibition is derived from Coltrane’s book, “Monument Eternal” (1977), an autobiographical volume that explores her transcendent music, spiritual discovery, and mourning and healing from the loss of her husband, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane (1926-1967). The exhibition features ephemera from Coltrane’s personal archive (hand-written letters, unreleased audio recordings, and rarely seen video footage) presented alongside a range of works by 19 contemporary artists inspired by Coltrane’s life and work, including Jamal Cyrus, Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus), Nikita Gale, Rashid Johnson, Jennie C. Jones, Jasper Marsalis, Cauleen Smith, Martine Syms, and Suné Woods. Curated by Erin Christovale with Nyah Ginwright, curatorial assistant, the exhibition is part of The Year of Alice, a collaboration led by the John and Alice Coltrane Home.
Installation view of “Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Calif. (Dec. 15, 2024–Aug. 3, 2025). Shown, from left, Works by Calida Rawles, Kara Walker, Lorna Simpson, and Zizipho Poswa. | Courtesy LACMA
Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics @ Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles, Calif. | Dec. 15, 2024–Aug. 3, 2025
Representing the Black Atlantic and Pacific, the exhibition brings together 60 artists active in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The roster includes Los Angeles-based artists Edgar Arceneaux, Mark Bradford, Widline Cadet, Patrisse Cullors, Awol Erizku, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya, as well as Igshaan Adams, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sanford Biggers, Ibrahim Mahama, Wangechi Mutu, Kambui Olujimi, Zohra Opoku, Frida Orupabo, Zizipho Poswa, Calida Rawles, Lorna Simpson, Yinka Shonibare, and Alberta Whittle, among many others. Seventy works across painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, and time-based media are featured. About half are new acquisitions from LACMA’s collection. Organized by LACMA curator Dhyandra Lawson, the exhibition is arranged around four themes—Speech and Silence, Movement and Transformation, Imagination, and Representation.
Installation view of “KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Media Arts of Ben Caldwell,” Art + Practice, Leimert Park, Los Angeles, Calif. (Oct. 12, 2024–March 8, 2025). | Photo by Joshua White
KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Media Arts of Ben Caldwell @ Art + Practice, Leimert Park, Los Angeles, Calif. | Oct. 12, 2024–March 8, 2025
Born in New Mexico, artist and filmmaker Ben Caldwell spent his childhood at the local movie theater watching his grandfather project films. The exposure charted his life’s path. Caldwell earned an MFA from UCLA (1976) and was active in what became known as LA Rebellion, a movement of Black UCLA film school graduates that eschewed the Hollywood system in favor of independent filmmaking. His films include “I & I: An African Allegory” (1979) and “Eyewitness: Reflections of Malcolm X & O.A.A.U.” (2006). Caldwell briefly taught film and video at Howard University before returning to Leimert Park where he established the Kaos Network in 1984. For four decades, the media arts center has been a social force that centers education, community, and Black artistry. Inspired by the recent book “KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell,” the multimedia exhibition celebrates Caldwell’s archive and practice across photography, film, video, music, technology, and design. Co-presented by the California African American Museum and Art + Practice, the exhibition is organized by independent curator Jheanelle Brown and Robeson Taj Frazier, author of “Kaos Theory.”
HANA WARD, “Pioneer of Possibility,” 2023 (oil on canvas, 72 x 58 inches). | © Hana Ward. Courtesy the artist and Ochi Projects
World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project @ California African American Museum, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Calif. |Sept. 18, 2024-March 2, 2025
George Washington Carver (c. 1864-1943), the agricultural engineer and inventor famous for his experimentation with peanuts, was an early advocate of sustainable agriculture. For nearly half a century, Carver was a professor at Tuskegee Institute, the Alabama HBCU where he was head of the agriculture department. He was also an artist whose science background factored in his practice. This exhibition provides a rare opportunity to view Carter’s paintings, paint samples, and lab equipment in conversation with works by nearly 30 contemporary artists, collectives, and scientists inspired by his groundbreaking ideas, including Terry Adkins, Ash Arder, Kevin Beasley, Diedrick Brackens, Sheila Pree Bright, John Cage, Robert Colescott, Karon Davis, Charles Gaines, William Padilla-Brown, Alicia Piller, Judson Powell, Noah Purifoy, Tavares Strachan, Henry Taylor, Hana Ward, Jack Whitten, and Amanda Williams, among others. Co-curated by Cameron Shaw and independent curator Yael Lipschutz, the exhibition is part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, the Getty’s South California arts initiative, which occurs ever five years.
BETYE SAAR, Installation view of “Drifting Toward Twilight,” 2023. | © 2023 Betye Saar. Photo by Joshua White / JWPictures.com. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight @ The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, Calif. | Nov. 11, 2023–Nov. 30, 2025 November 2027
“Drifting Toward Twilight” by Betye Saar is an immersive, room-sized installation commissioned by The Huntington. The walls are ocean blue and feature phases of the moon and a poem by the artist. At its center is a site-specific work, a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe Saar found through a newspaper advertisement. She made the canoe her own by adding wood chairs evoking “passengers,” antlers in birdcages, and other found objects, along with natural materials from The Huntington’s more than 200-acre grounds. The exhibition is co-curated by Yinshi Lerman-Tan and Sola Saar Agustsson, the artist’s granddaughter. On long-term view, the installation was originally slated to close this November, but the run has been extended to four years through November 2027. CT
FIND MORE In the wake of the recent wildfires that devastated several Los Angeles neighborhoods, including the historically Black community of Altadena, the LA County Department of Arts and Culture, local museums, galleries, and other organizations have rallied to support impacted artists and arts workers through grant funds and recovery assistance. Creative Capital compiled a list of Wildfire Relief Resources for L.A. Artists. In addition, ARTNOIR’s Jar of Love Fund started a new cycle to assist the Black and Brown creative community in Los Angeles
FIND MORE Frieze Los Angeles (Feb. 20-23), which is currently underway in the city, announced the Land Memories: Voices of Altadena project, a partnership with the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums that “seeks to uplift and preserve collective memories of the historically Black and culturally-rich community of Altadena.” In celebration of Black History Month, Frieze Los Angeles also highlighted Black artists who are the focus of gallery presentations at the art fair and exhibitions around the city
BOOKSHELF
“Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal” was published on the occasion of the museum exhibition. First published in 1977, Alice Coltrane’s book, “Monument Eternal,” has also been reissued with a new foreword by Ashley Kahn. “Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics” accompanies the LACMA exhibition. “Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe” and “Betye Saar: Drifting toward Twilight” document their corresponding exhibitions. “KAOS Theory: The Afrokosmic Ark of Ben Caldwell” inspired the exhibition co-presented by Art + Practice and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. Forthcoming in March, “World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project,” is rife with previously unpublished archival materials and documentation of life and legacy of George Washington Carver.
