Celebrate Black History Month with “Black American Portraits”

Spanning over two centuries, from around 1800 to the present day, “Black American Portraits” is a celebratory visual chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves through their own eyes. The book accompanies an exhibition that originated at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) in 2021 and is now on tour. This selection of approximately 140 works from the museum’s permanent collection highlights emancipation, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the multiculturalism of the 1990s, and the spirit of Black Lives Matter. That’s the late, great Chadwick Boseman on the cover of “Black American Portraits,” which is available from Amazon and wherever art books are sold.