Celebrating Black and African American Heritage
Black History in the Library Exhibition Hall
Born only a decade after the abolition of slavery in the United States, Carter G. Woodson would devote his life to combating the erasure of the Black experience from the nation’s historical record. Only the second Black American to receive a doctorate from Harvard University, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 to help sustain this work. His many publications include A Century of Negro Migration, a pioneering examination of Black efforts to escape the dire fate of slavery and its legacy of prejudice and hatred.
Black History in the Library Exhibition Hall
Pasadena-born author Octavia E. Butler crafted her acclaimed science fiction novels through extensive research and persistent writing and rewriting. For Parable of the Sower, she wove together concerns about climate change, social inequity, and pharmaceutical innovation to construct the story’s dystopian future. Like Butler, other artists in the 20th and 21st century employed a variety of genres and media to envision the future, explore the past, and contemplate the present.
Nov. 11, 2023–Nov. 30, 2025 | Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art
Renowned American artist Betye Saar’s large-scale work Drifting Toward Twilight—recently commissioned by The Huntington—is a site-specific installation that features a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe and found objects, including birdcages, antlers, and natural materials harvested by Saar from The Huntington’s grounds.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, California was an important site of African American creativity, even in the face of intense discrimination. Black enclaves emerged as places where African American leaders, activists, writers, performers, and visual artists could build community and make professional connections.
Expand your home library with books by some of our favorite Black and African American authors, many of whom are part of The Huntington’s collections. Shop our curated collection online and in-store.
Hilton Als joined Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence in a conversation about his career as a critic and curator, the relationship between visual and textual forms, and the endless inspiration found in The Huntington’s collections.
Gee’s Bend quiltmaker Louisiana Bendolph discussed the exhibition “Gee’s Bend: Shared Legacy” with curator Lauren Cross on June 16, 2023, in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art. The Huntington’s exhibition featured an installation of prints made by members of the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers’ Collective from Alabama during an artistic residency at Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley, California.
Transport yourself to the WPA era through songs archived in the extensive Dijkstra Black Music Collection at Stanford University. This playlist was inspired by the exhibition “Art for the People,” on view through March 18, 2024.
Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977), A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, 2021. Oil on linen, canvas: 70 1/2 × 49 1/8 in. (179.1 × 124.8 cm), frame: 87 × 64 × 5 1/4 in. (221 × 162.6 × 13.3 cm). | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. © Kehinde Wiley. Photo by Joshua White / JWPictures.com.
Kehinde Wiley’s “A Portrait of a Young Gentleman”
A commissioned painting by renowned American artist Kehinde Wiley, A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, debuted Oct. 2, 2021, in the Thornton Portrait Gallery, across from Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy (ca. 1770). The Huntington’s British grand manner portraits made such an impression on Wiley as a young artist that he would later incorporate their stylistic representations of wealth, glory, and power into his own artistic practice, focusing on the Black and brown bodies missing from the museums he visited.
Exhibition
Sargent Claude Johnson
Feb. 17–May 20, 2024 | This exhibition of 43 works is dedicated to the work of Sargent Claude Johnson, the California artist whose uplifting portrayals of people of color made him the West Coast’s key connection to the Harlem Renaissance.
