Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas

Join us to discuss “Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas,” an exhibition that traces narratives of Blackness across the Atlantic world by bringing together work from artists who absorbed and reinterpreted African artistic practices, sacred customs, and cultural expressions.

Hear from curator Martina Tanga and professor Reiland Rabaka as they reflect on topics in the exhibition such as Pan-Africanism and the Negritude Movement by looking at work by various artists, writers, and thinkers—like Loïs Mailou Jones, Allen Rohan Crite, Rubem Valentim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Léon Damas, Aimé Césaire, and Léopold Senghor. This talk highlights shared cultural heritages that create connections for communities around the importance of Africa’s presence in the Americas.

Martina Tanga, exhibition curator and curatorial research and interpretation associate, Art Bridges Initiative, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Reiland Rabaka, professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies and director of the Center for African and African American Studies, University of Colorado Boulder