Talks & Conversations

A Snapshot of Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985

Ming Smith, Sun Ra Space II, New York, New York, 1978, gelatin silver print, Charina Endowment Fund, 2017.42.1

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Join us for a 30-minute “snapshot” of Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985. We’ll orient you to the themes of the exhibition and look closely at a few images together. With this introduction in mind, explore the rest of the exhibition at your own pace.

This program takes place on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays between October 5, 2025, and January 11, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. Meet at the West Building Rotunda.

For groups of 15 or more people, please schedule a group experience.

Sign-language interpreters and guides for visitors who are blind or have low vision are available for programs. Please call (202) 737-4215 or email [email protected] three weeks in advance for an appointment.

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Abstracted objects, including a guitar, vase, papers, and playing cards, are gathered on a tabletop in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that the some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. The brown table has an oval top and a curving pedestal foot. At the center of the jumble on the tabletop, a guitar lies on its side with the neck facing us and reaching to our right. Beneath the black fretboard and neck, the curving form of the guitar is painted tomato red. The upper half is represented by a squared-off brown form. The guitar seems to rest atop or in front of an array of stacked shapes, like splayed pieces of paper, in white, lavender purple, and pale blue. A curving form painted in turquoise to our left seems to be a vase holding a spray of three flowers. The vase is shown against a white square painted with horizontal black lines, like sheet music. A dark gray form at the middle of the table, beneath the guitar, could be the silhouette of a bird facing our left. Just to the right of the bird, a pair of playing cards lie on a blue area. Painted in turquoise against gray, one card has six dots and the other one club. A chair with a curved, arching top and a gray upholstered seat is pulled up to the table to our right. The front left leg is light gray with turned knobs near the foot and halfway up the leg; the right leg is painted black, as if in shadow. Panels of pale tan suggest wainscotting behind the table beneath a pale gray wall across the background. The overall impression of the painting is fragmented as even single objects seem to be broken up into planes and areas of color. The artist signed and underlined his name with red paint in the lower left corner: “Picasso.”

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