Curated by the museum’s director, Koyo Kouoh, it included works by more than 150 artists, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jacob Lawrence, Chéri Samba, Danielle McKinney, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Joy Labinjo. As well as a catalogue, it was accompanied by a musical score and a year-long series of online lectures.
In May, the exhibition travels to Switzerland for a five-month stint at the Kunstmuseum Basel. It’s been updated for this second showing, with the works now divided into five themes: the everyday; joy and revelry; repose; sensuality; and triumph and emancipation.
Main image, clockwise from top left: Willem de Kooning, Untitled (Rome), 1959, at Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice; Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872, at Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Tyler Mitchell, Simply Fragile, 2022, at V&A South Kensington, London; Frans Hals, Portrait of a Couple, probably Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen, circa 1622, at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Caspar David Friedrich, Selbstbildnis, circa 1810, at Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Wait your turn — Competitive Sisterhood, 2021, at Kunstmuseum Basel
