The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will open the exhibition “Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures” on March 24.
The exhibition, which will be located in the museum’s Bank of America Special Exhibitions Gallery, explores and reveals Afrofuturism’s historic and poignant engagement with Black history and popular culture.
The exhibition will feature more than 100 objects from music, film, television, comic books, fashion, theater, literature, and more and will cover more than a century of Afrofuturism’s rich history of expression and investigates its impact and influence on American culture. Afrofuturism will be showcased in three sections, “The History of Black Futures”, “New Black Futures” and “Infinite Possibilities.”
Kevin Young, the Andrew W. Mellon director of the museum, said Afrofuturism reflects Black people’s hopes for a better tomorrow despite a perilous past.
“Afrofuturism has long been a mix of celebration and resistance, musicality and theatricality, achievement and survival,” Young said. “Much of this mix-making and myth-making was through music, from the Negro spirituals down to jazz and gospel, funk and hip-hop.”