Photography played critical roles in both the civil rights and Black Arts movements. Across the United States and internationally, artists of the African diaspora utilized photographs as a means of artistic expression, an organizing tool, and a means of building community. The Getty is putting some of this historic work on display during their exhibition “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985,” from February 24 through June 14, 2026.
“‘Photography and the Black Arts Movement’ brings together works by more than one hundred photographers, painters, graphic designers, and multimedia artists who used photographic images in their struggles against inequality,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle, and Robert Tuttle, Director of the J. Paul Getty. “The works in this exhibition show how a wide range of artists and activists tapped the power of photography to strengthen respect for the Black community and culture. Amid the turbulence of the mid-20th century, they found powerful ways of using photography to support and advance social justice.”
Divided into eight sections, this exhibition brings together more than 150 artworks in a range of media, including video art, paintings, collages, contact sheets, newsletters, and magazines, giving a sense of the varied ways that photographic imagery circulated at the time.
Highlights include paintings by artists such as Frank Bowling, David Driskell, Ademola Olugebefola, and Raymond Saunders, as well as striking photographic portraits by Kwame Brathwaite, Mikki Ferrill, Barkley Hendricks, and Carla Williams, and artwork by Los Angeles icons including Harry Adams, Charles Gaines, Betye Saar, John Simmons, and Bruce Talamon.
Recent Getty Museum acquisitions include works by Alvin Baltrop, Roy DeCarava, Chester Higgins, Senga Nengudi, and Beuford Smith, as well as a listening station featuring album art and music that had a profound impact during that era.
While many images in the exhibition are joyous, depictions of violence that were circulated at the time were intended to bring attention to racism and its effects. An installation by artist Adrian Piper, “Art for the Art World Surface Pattern (1976)”, comments on the prevalence of such imagery, reproducing newspaper clippings documenting wars, uprisings, and natural disasters inside a small room stenciled with “NOT A PERFORMANCE” in bold red type. Inside, in a recorded monologue, the artist voices the role of a put-upon viewer, grumpy at having to contend with politics while at an art museum.
Uniting around civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century, writers, musicians, and visual artists explored how their work could celebrate Black culture and promote dignity, hope, and freedom. Their efforts to make and support art rooted in history and identity became known as the Black Arts Movement.