Black Literary Art

Candace Hunter's Intentionality opens September 24th The Dan Ryan Expressway carries Chicagoans across the city every day. For artist Candace Hunter, it also marks a rupture. On September 24, Hunter opens Intentionality 1960, Whose Dreams?, an exhibition that asks viewers to look past the familiar story of urban development and confront the communities erased to make it possible. The project begins with a number: 50,831. It represents the estimated number of African Americans

Middle row right - President of Columbia College Chicago Shantay N. Bolton. Bottom row - Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., foreground; background curator Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. An exhibition that imagines a life, not a loss Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago opened "If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground" with an emotionally moving convening. The exhibition imagines the life Emmett Till might have lived had he safely returned home to Chicago,

Top Row: Cultural Impact Award was given to Lavett Ballard; work by Dwight White and Marryam Moma. Middle Row: Pigment’s Allison Casselberry and Patricia Everett with Norman Teague; Cow Horn Sculpture by Teague, Paul Bacardi Smith’s Watermelanin. Third row: Chicago in Indy; Work by Lavett Ballard and Nyzere Dillon. The 6th Annual BUTTER Fine Art Fair returned to Indianapolis Labor Day Weekend, continuing its evolution as one of the country’s most consequential artist-centere

Issue VI of Pigment International's award-winning magazine issue lands this September, and it is one of our most ambitious editions yet. Inside, readers will find a profile of designer Norman Teague, whose furniture and architectural work continues to reshape how Chicago sees Black craftsmanship. The issue also spotlights Chicago artists connected to the Obama Presidential Center, tracing how the campus is emerging as a new anchor for the city's creative community on the Sout

Stephen Marc, Untitled, from Changing Chicago Project, 1988. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy: Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) invites the public to a day of programming marking the opening of If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground, an exhibition curated by Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., Emmett Till's cousin, close friend, and last surviving witness to his 1955 k

Jane Carpenter Rock, Deputy Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State continues its tribute to Betye Saar with a curator talk by Jane Carpenter-Rock, Deputy Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Carpenter-Rock wrote her doctoral dissertation on Saar's work and is the author of Betye Saar, part of the David C. Driskell Series of African American Art. Her talk arrives weeks after Saar's passing on July

Bronzeville Center for the Arts launches “From The Ground Up” in partnership with the Milwaukee Art Museum and Chipstone Foundation The Bronzeville Center for the Arts (BCA) has announced From The Ground Up, a new national speaker series bringing leaders who have built some of the world's most significant cultural institutions to Milwaukee for candid conversations about vision, resilience and legacy. Presented with the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Chipstone Foundation, the se

The Pigment International art team - Barrett Keithley, Patricia Andrews-Keenan, Brenda Dickerson, Amorion Bell and Phyliss North; Dickerson and Fred Hampton Jr. view the mural; Barrett Keithley and Ray Thompson, whose University of Iowa number is on the basketball court at Wharton Elementary School; Dickerson and her mother Delilah and with April Kates-Ellison with the Nubian Nine an d The Lights On Collective. (photo credit Doug Kenney) A ribbon cutting at Argo Park marked

What if the Black home could be read as a museum—one filled not with objects behind glass, but with the furniture we inherit, photographs we keep, textiles we make, books we read, and traditions we pass from one generation to the next? That question sits at the center of AfroBohemian Home: An Installation by Zsudayka Nzinga, opening September 2 at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University. Curated by Louise Cutler, the exhibition transforms the gallery in

Above: Norman Teague in conversation with Pigment International will be one of the featured artists at this year's Butter Art Fair; Bottom row: Bianca Marks will be a curator for Butter. Middle and right, Truss Chair and Ibaaka AKA Mule by Norman Teague Design Studios. (Teague image by Big_X_Tsu. Furniture images courtesy of Norman Teague Design Studio) Guest curator Bianca Marks helps shape an expanded Labor Day weekend fair in Indianapolis, as Teague's full profile debuts i

Remembering Dion Clarke, who passed away this Tuesday. His Harlem Fine Arts Show (HFAS) celebrated its 18th Anniversary this February, and its first iteration in the Hamptons this weekend. The passing of Dion E. Clarke, Founder and CEO of the Harlem Fine Arts Show (HFAS), leaves an immeasurable void in the world of Black art. He used what he learned working with other Black art visionaries and turned it into the nation's largest traveling exhibition dedicated to artists of th

C.O.L.O.U.R.S and Smile Like You Mean It by Edo See His Work This Friday at Revolutionary Among the most intellectually compelling bodies of work in Pigment International's upcoming exhibition Revolutionary, opening July 17 at Vjosa Cafe & Events in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood, is C.O.L.O.U.R.S., a new series of work by Chicago artist Eddie ‘Edo’ Santana White. The exhibition explores the ongoing evolution of Black resistance, identity, and self-determination across Am

As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, Pigment International steps into the center of the conversation with back-to-back appearances in mid-July that ask the same question from two different stages: who gets to tell America's story? On July 16, Founder and CEO Patricia Andrews-Keenan joins the open mic lineup for "America @ 250: A Journalism Reckoning," hosted by NABJ Chicago and the Field Foundation at Impact House in downtown Chicago. Set against a backdrop of press fre

The Reluctant Ribbon Merchant by Jesse Howard and Patrice Lumumba by Candace Hunter are works in Revolutionary opening July 17th at Vjosa Cafe and Events. Pigment International opens REVOLUNTARY, a bold new group exhibition on July 17 at Vjosa Cafe and Events, 1010 W. 35th Street in Bridgeport. The show runs through August 15th REVOLUNTARY is an extension of Pigment’s February 2026 exhibition Glory! Glory!, which drew national attention for its exploration of the American fl

Blooming Through It by Ingrid Mathurin and bottom work by Alexandria Eregbu. The Art of Blackness at Block 37 is a celebrated exhibition platform that continues its mission of amplifying Black artists while creating space for dialogue around identity, history, and the future. Curated by LaShun Tines, Justin Dwaun Redding, and Anefertiti Bowman, this year's exhibition asks audiences to consider what emerges when truth is honored, memory is preserved, and imagination is embrace

Harmonica & Thelonius by Chris Devins Where music ends, and painting begins, Chicago artist Chris Devins refuses to draw a line. On Friday, July 17, Devins will debut his oil painting “Harmonia and Thelonius” at Bridgeport Art Center’s prestigious 4th Floor Gallery as part of Color Songs: Musicians as Visual Artists, an exhibition curated by Dr. Yaoundé Olu running through September 4, 2026. The work belongs to Devin’s ongoing series “Into the Black,” a body of work committed

Photo top left - Taroue Brooks, crafted the forward for Thomas Lockhart's coffee table book Painting In the Spirit, Verlena Mooney Newell, Actor Leon, Pigment International's Patricia Andrews-Keenan, Tenia Davis, owner of Beyond the Book in Homewood, and artist Thomas Lockhart, whose work is showcased in the coffee table book. Top right - Lockhart's original work "The Past Illuminates the Future" created for the Pigmented Black Fine Art Show. Over a career spanning 25 years,

Artists Edo and Reggie McFly were part of a panel discussion the MentalHood Cultural Initiative Art and advocacy converged at Josephine’s on East 79th Street when the MentalHood Cultural Initiative hosted its Masculine Male Brunch—a morning of honest conversation, community, and the kind of radical vulnerability Black men are too rarely given space to express. Among the voices in the room were Pigment International artists Reggie McFly and Eddie “Edo” Santana White, who spoke

Work by Jamele Wright, Sr., Preston Sampson, and Gabrielle Torres will be featured in What the Eye Beholds. Curator September Gray brings a landmark group exhibition to Chicago, exploring perception, memory, and the human experience What the Eye Beholds is a compelling group exhibition presented by Atlanta based September Gray Fine Art Gallery opens in Chicago in July. Curated by September Gray, the show brings together seven visionary contemporary artists whose work interrog

Danny Simmons - 1953 - 2026 Daniel Dwayne Simmons Jr. — abstract expressionist painter, poet, published author, and philanthropist — passed away on June 14, 2026, at the age of 72. For those who knew his work, not just his famous last name, the loss is seismic.  In New York, he was the oldest Simmons brother — the quiet one who watched Russell build Def Jam and Joey become Rev Run of Run-DMC — while he built something altogether different: a life in paint, a gallery, a movem