MAKE THIS SUMMER UNFORGETTABLE | ADD A LITTLE ART TO YOUR VACA
From coast-to-coast exhibitions to an outdoor pilgrimage in Alabama, here's how to build culture into your summer plans.
Summer doesn't have to mean putting culture on pause. This season, some of the most compelling exhibitions in the country are celebrating Black artistry — and a little planning turns any trip into a pilgrimage worth taking.
On the West Coast, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco is hosting two standout shows through August 16: UNBOUND: Art, Blackness, & the Universe, which explores cosmic themes through painting and sculpture, and Demetri Broxton: Ancestral Echoes, an emerging-artist showcase built on intricate sculptural and cultural storytelling. In Washington, D.C., the National Museum of African American History and Culture presents Revelation: A Journey into Abstraction, tracing mid-20th-century to contemporary abstract works by African American artists.
For something more immersive, head outdoors to Montgomery, Alabama, where the Equal Justice Initiative's Freedom Monument Sculpture Park invites visitors to walk a 17-acre site that weaves contemporary art with history. Visitors are greeted at the entrance by Simone Leigh's "Brick House," a 16-foot bronze bust of a Black woman whose form draws on the dwellings of the Musgum people of Cameroon and Chad. The park also features work from artists including Charles Gaines, Alison Saar, Wangechi Mutu, Rose B. Simpson, Theaster Gates, Kehinde Wiley, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Keep an eye out for regional showcases too — from Black Art in America's BAIA Fine Art Print Fair in East Point, Georgia (August 14–16), to Free and Queer: Black Californian Roots of Gay Liberation at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.
However, you spend your summer, let Black art be part of the itinerary. It's a season made richer by a little pigment.
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