Fine Art

‘Picturing Black Girlhood’: A Praise Song for Black Girls

Never before have Black girls been so visible—the thought kept occuring to me as I explored the wonder that is “Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility,” to date the largest exhibition on Black girls in the world. The expansive showcase of emerging and established photographers and filmmakers takes us on a journey into Black girls’ interior lives that simultaneously imagines a more capacious worlds for them.

The exhibition curated by photographers Scheherazade Tillet and Zoraida Lopez-Diago highlights the history of Black women photographers while also re-imagining this world for Black girls.

Harriet Tubman in the Art of Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold’s art on Harriet Tubman is an illustration of her capacity as an artist for taking somber stories and turning them into stories of triumph, victory and joy. 

Faith (my mother) is a fabulist whose real interest is in projecting her ideas into the future. The older I get, the more I appreciate my mother’s art, in particular her insistence upon rendering the most apparently despairing circumstances of our histories as Black folk as opportunities for spiritual and magical transcendence.

A Conversation with Artist Nettrice Gaskins, ‘Beacon of Hope’ Creator

Nettrice Gaskins is a digital artist and self-identified Afrofuturist whose work has been receiving national attention. A 2021 Ford global fellow, Gaskins’s work is featured in the current “FUTURES” exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Ms.’s Janell Hobson, who invited Gaskins to create original art for the Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project, interviewed the artist over Zoom.  

A Conversation with Music Composer Nkeiru Okoye of ‘Harriet Tubman’ Opera Fame

A Conversation with Music Composer Nkeiru Okoye of "Harriet Tubman" Opera Fame

Dr. Nkeiru Okoye, whose first name means “the future is great,” has already dazzled the world as an internationally recognized music composer of opera, symphonic, choral, chamber, solo piano and vocal works. A 2021 Guggenheim fellow, Okoye is best known for her opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom, which premiered with The American Opera Project in 2014.

UNPLANNED PARENTHOOD: Inside the Art Installation Using Historical Testimony to Call for a Feminist Future

On Wednesday, feminist artist Michelle Hartney launched UNPLANNED PARENTHOOD—a collaborative, textile-based piece exploring historical attacks on reproductive health access and calling for intersectional reproductive justice.

“I want to tell the stories of the women who suffered because of laws that once prohibited so many from accessing information and care, and reckon with the fact that the attacks we’re seeing now on reproductive care hurt women at the intersections the most.”

Abortion Bans, Feminism and Sexism Fuel Sally Edelstein’s Art: “Whatever We’re Exposed to Has An Impact On Us”

Abortion Bans, Feminism and Sexism Fuel Sally Edelstein’s Art: "Whatever We’re Exposed to Has An Impact On Us"

Award-winning collage artist and blogger Sally Edelstein calls herself a “visual anthropologist” and describes her intricate works as ”nostalgia-based.”

“Politics and art are one,” said Edelstein. “Nothing I do is without social content. That’s my interest.”

“Whatever we’re exposed to has an impact on us as we come of age. I want people to think about the messages they’re taking in.”