The storage space was packed with thousands upon thousands of photographs. Some were at least a century old, imprinted on glass plates. There were others on nitrate film so deteriorated it was at risk of combusting. In a blues and gospel mecca like Memphis, several faces were instantly recognizable: B.B. …
It’s probably too much to show up at one of these Costume Institute shows looking for the object that ties the whole thing together. Just because they’re about clothes doesn’t mean they have to do what a smart outfit does. And yet damn if I didn’t find a single object …
Clarence O. Smith, who convinced skeptical mainstream advertisers of the power and worth of the Black female consumer market as a founder of Essence, the first general-circulation magazine directed at Black women, died on April 21. He was 92. Mr. Smith, who lived in Yonkers, N.Y., died in a hospital …
In the eight years since it opened on the National Mall, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has become one of the glittering jewels of the Smithsonian Institution. With award-winning architecture, a three-tiered shape evoking a traditional Yoruban crown, and installations portraying the struggles and triumphs of …
Follow our live coverage of the 2025 Met Gala red carpet. Last October, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced its next fashion show, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the political landscape looked very different. Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and the first Black woman ever to …
A rehearsal of “The Central Park Five,” an opera about the Black and Latino boys wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger, was just a few days old this month when the tenor who plays Donald J. Trump began to sing. “They are animals! Monsters!…Support our police! Bring back …
This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times. Back in the 1960s, a prominent Detroit obstetrician had two passions — delivering babies and collecting artifacts that told the African American story. And just as those babies grew up, so …
By now, you probably know the first Monday in May is not just any old Monday: It’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit, a.k.a. the Oscars of the East Coast or the party of the year. We think of it as the Fashion X Games or the All-Star …
This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times. Children in 1950s America grew up with a distinct image of the Old West through television heroes like the Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp and Hopalong Cassidy. They all …
Debi Young nodded in her maternal way, validating Jamie Hector’s concerns. Hector was nothing like Marlo Stanfield, the sociopathic shot caller he depicted in “The Wire” nearly a generation ago. But the latest script had called for Stanfield and a woman to be intimate in a car. Hector, then 28, …