Articles

Schools and libraries across Texas are gearing up to celebrate African American History Month in February with two Humanities Texas traveling exhibitions. Learn more about the exhibitions below and plan ahead for next year by booking today.

Two Texas venues will celebrate the fight for civil rights with the help of Road to the Promised Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, a Humanities Texas traveling exhibition. The Eastfield College Center for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity in Mesquite will host the wall-hanging exhibition from January 27 through February 28. The Ozuna Public Library at Palo Alto College in San Antonio will display the freestanding exhibition from February 3 through February 28.

Featuring photographs, facsimiles of landmark documents, and quotations by Dr. King and others engaged in the struggle for civil rights, this exhibition surveys the civil rights movement from the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 through the 1990s.

"What is Africa to me?" This question posed by African American poet Countee Cullen is addressed in the Humanities Texas traveling exhibition Black Art—Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art. Wells Branch Public Library in Austin will host this freestanding exhibition from February 2 through March 1.

Black Art—Ancestral Legacy provides examples from twentieth-century African American artists—both trained and untrained—who visually respond to Cullen's question. These artists draw heavily on African influence, while simultaneously reinterpreting it for a different time and place. The exhibition surveys the work of forty-five artists through photographs, posters, and concise texts.

A second freestanding version of Black Art—Ancestral Legacy is available to rent beginning February 4, 2020. To learn more about reserving an exhibition for your venue, please contact our exhibitions coordinator at exhibitions@humanitiestexas.org or complete the online rental form.