Happy Black History Month! The ASALH has chosen African Americans and the Arts as their Black History theme for 2024. If you’re interested in engaging with this theme, what better way than to visit an exhibit that showcases Black artists and their accomplishments? Fortunately, we offer significantly discounted admission to various local art museums through our Adventure Passes program.
Book a pass through our website or give us a call to reserve your discounted ticket to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, or Worcester Art Museum! We don’t currently offer an Adventure Pass for the RISD Museum, but admission is free on Thursday evenings and during the day on Sundays. All four museums have great exhibits right now (or coming soon) that feature Black artists. Take a look at what each has to offer:
The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston)
- Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today – This exhibit gathers works by 28 artists. Here, diaspora is not a longing to return home but a way of understanding that we are always in movement and that our identities are in constant states of transformation. Works on view explore how much of our personal and collective histories we carry in our bodies and how art-making can reflect cross-cultural exchanges.
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)
- Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party – This exhibition brings together 27 photographs by Stephen Shames that feature the women, or “comrade sisters,” as they were known, of the Black Panther party. They document the efforts these women undertook at community schools, free medical clinics, voter registration sites, community nutrition programs, and elder care centers across the United States
- Hank Willis Thomas: Remember Me – This multimedia installation, which sources imagery from photography and archival materials, reframes historical iconography to resonate with contemporary audiences and propose constructive, collaborative, reparative futures. It explores collective memory and the visual culture of identity.
RISD Museum (Providence, RI)
- Ryan Cardoso & DJ Chappel: The Let Out – This exhibit activates contemporary fashion garments donated to the collection by Mark Pollack. With the support of their team, Ryan Cardoso and DJ Chappel used this collection to style more than 40 characters. The resulting 8-foot by 21-foot banner presents a scene taking place at the end of a fashion event.
- Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch – This exhibit celebrates the work and legacy of this underrecognized 20th-century sculptor who is best known for her contributions to expatriate culture in Paris during the interwar period. It will feature three-dimensional sculptures of marble and wood, painted wood friezes, and watercolors as well as photographic presentations of archival documents and lost or destroyed sculptures.
Worcester Art Museum (Worcester)
- Faith Ringgold: Freedom to Say What I Please – Ringgold’s work incorporates craft and storytelling to explore themes around identity and history. This exhibit features “story quilts,” other textiles, painting, prints, and sculpture.
- Claudio Eshun: Elegant Alien – Elegant Alien is a continuing body of work that Eshun has created about his family’s history of immigration from Ghana and through Italy, as well as their creation of a new home in America. It depicts his friends and family in expressive tableaus, utilizing costume and performance to create evocative compositions.