San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora has had a streak of stellar programming this year that’s included dinners with culinary luminaries, fashion-forward films and a strong solo show from one of its Emerging Artists Program cohort members.
On Oct. 1-6, MoAD will launch a new initiative to celebrate the multifaceted creative expressions of the Bay Area’s Black artists. The first-ever Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week kicks off with a new exhibition at MoAD called Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors and Radical Black Joy. With a member preview Oct.1 and public opening Oct. 2, the show brings together furnishings, lights, ceramics, tapestries and other objects that evoke ideas of home, safety and belonging — “without fetishizing Black strength and resilience,” reads the curatorial text.
On Oct. 1, the West Oakland Library will host a discussion with artists Muzae Sesay and Devyn Barnes and members of the Oakland Black Cowboy Association, which has been leading Black equestrian culture in the East Bay for five decades. On Oct. 5, visitors can see the Black Cowboys in action at DeFremery Park at their annual parade.
Black Art Week also includes several gallery exhibitions and open studios, including one on Oct. 4 and 5 at Patricia Sweetow Gallery with Ramekon O’Arwisters, whose textured, colorful and glittering ceramic sculptures take inspiration from drag and African American quilting traditions. Painter LE Boheme Muse and photographer Najee Tobin will host open studios on Oct. 5 as well.
Local history is a thread that runs through Black Art Week. On Oct. 5, SF City Guide has a tour called “The Astonishing Legacy of America’s ‘First Black Millionaire,’” about the life of William Leidesdorff, a pre-Gold Rush entrepreneur and settler who helped establish what eventually became San Francisco. The same day at the Hunters Point Shipyard Gallery, artists Stacey M. Carter and William Rhodes will speak about their year-long effort to document the neighborhood’s Black history through interviews with local seniors, which they present in an exhibition of historic documents, oral histories and quilts by Rhodes.
