Art

New Orleans African American Museum Reopens after Six Years

NEW ORLEANS DATA NEWS WEEKLY — New Orleans has many historical traditions, however, when the African-American Museum in Tremé closed in 2013, due to financial problems, it was considered an important loss for the Black community. When it first opened in 2000 on 1417 Gov. Nicholls Street, the museum served as a space to house the history and culture of Black people in the city. Residents and supporters showed up at the Historic Building of the Villa Meilleur as the museum reopened on April 12, 2019.

Published

7 years ago

April 24, 2019

Oakland Post

By Edward Carter III

New Orleans has many historical traditions, however, when the African-American Museum in Tremé closed in 2013, due to financial problems, it was considered an important loss for the Black community. When it first opened in 2000 on 1417 Gov. Nicholls Street, the museum served as a space to house the history and culture of Black people in the city. Residents and supporters showed up at the Historic Building of the Villa Meilleur as the museum reopened on April 12, 2019.

“We are really doing a lot of fundraising both in the city and outside the city to renovate these buildings,” said Gia Hamilton, the Executive Director and Chief Curator for the Museum.

“We want to make sure that all the people who put energy in that space get the opportunity to see it come alive again,” said Hamilton, adding that the plan is to turn this renovated museum into one of the best museums across the country.

“We are working tirelessly again to think through and strategize on how to fulfill this dream of creating a state-of-the-art African-American Museum,” said Michael Griffin, the Museum’s Board President and the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Daughters of Charity Services of New Orleans.

The grand opening launched with an exhibit titled “Everywhere We Are, Everywhere We Go: Black Space and Geographies.” The exhibit was co-produced by the Amistad Research Center and will be available for the public to view until the end of 2019. The renovations for the New Orleans African-American Museum are part of wider city plans to modernize the whole Tremé neighborhood along Governor Nicholls Street. The museum will use federal and private grants to support renovations for the remaining buildings that comprise the museum’s extended campus.

“The New Orleans African-American Museum is routed in history, culture and art,” Hamilton said.

“Part of what we want to do is make sure that we are grounding this in the history, but that we are also doing economic development. We are not interested in being an old model of a museum, we are interested in how we can really serve a community,” Hamilton added.

This was an event that impacted the community in various ways, residents said. For people who were already aware of the museum, seeing it return as an important space for the community was a moment of celebration for those who attended the opening.

“May we always have joy, may we always have laughter, and may we remember that we are really children,” said Janet “Sula Spirit” Evans, a Singer-Songwriter, who spoke at the event, and who encouraged the audience to preserve memory through places like these. The museum affects the community positively, Adams added, giving artists, musicians, and speakers a place to connect to residents and to share and preserve culture.

“The museum is diverse giving people a location to feel that this is where they belong,” Evans said. “Thank you for being honorable, thank you for your liking, and for all the babies out here, thank you all for being born. I say Ashe,” Evans told the crowd at the opening.

This article originally appeared in the New Orleans Data News Weekly.

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Activism

Black Repertory Group Needs Volunteers to Help Shape the Next Generation of Artists and Leaders

Legendary performers such as Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover worked with and were inspired by BRG’s founders. More recently, Grammy award-winning artist Kehlani attended the Black Repertory Group Summer Day Camp for several years.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Courtesy image.

By Sean Vaughn Scott, Special to The Post

For more than 60 years, the Black Repertory Group (BRG) has changed lives through the arts.

Founded in 1964 by educators and visionaries Birel L. Vaughn and Nora Vaughn, BRG has become one of America’s oldest continuously operating Black theater institutions. For generations, it has preserved culture, developed talent, and provided opportunities for young people to discover their voices and their potential.

The results speak for themselves.

Long before international recognition, Kehlani performed on the BRG stage. During a summer day camp production of “Princess and da Frog,” she portrayed Ray, the lovable firefly whose light guided others through the darkness. Her journey is proof that today’s camper may become tomorrow’s artist, entrepreneur, educator, or leader.

Located at 3201 Adeline St. in Berkeley, BRG continues that mission through its Youth Summer Day Camp of the Arts.

BRG is currently accepting applications and maintains an open enrollment program. Students may enroll throughout the summer as space permits and immediately become part of the BRG family.

We are also proud to be a multicultural opportunity program, welcoming children and families from all backgrounds, cultures, and communities. Through theater, music, dance, public speaking, visual arts, technical theater, and leadership development, students gain confidence, discipline, creativity, and lifelong skills.

As our programs grow, so does our need for volunteers.

We are seeking community members to assist with youth mentoring, registration, costumes, set construction, painting, props, ushering, photography, social media, marketing, technical theater, and fundraising activities. Whether you volunteer for a few hours or throughout the season, your support directly impacts the lives of young people.

BRG also partners with churches, civic organizations, alumni associations, fraternities, sororities, and community groups through theater party fundraisers, group sales, and buy-out performances. These partnerships have helped organizations raise funds while supporting arts and cultural programming.

The theater also serves as the home of the Berkeley NAACP Chapter, which meets every second Saturday of the month from 1 to 3 p.m.

For more than six decades, the Black Repertory Group has remained committed to one belief: every child deserves an opportunity to shine.

The next great artist may already be among us.

The next Kehlani may already be walking through our doors.

We invite you to volunteer, enroll, participate, and become part of the legacy.

For more information please go to www.blackrepertorygroup.com, call (510) 652-2120, or email info@blackrepertorygroup.com

Sean Vaughn Scott is the director of the Black Repertory Group.

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Oakland Museum Presents Landmark Retrospective Celebrating Beloved Bay Area Artist Mildred Howard

“Poetics of Memory” coincides with a year of major recognition for Howard. In 2026, she received the California Arts Council’s 50th Anniversary Award, honoring artists whose work has shaped California’s cultural and civic life, as well as the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Artist Impact Award. In 2025, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her transformative contributions to American cultural life.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Mildred Howard. Photo by Christine Cueto for the Oakland Museum of California, 2025.

Special to The Post

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, on June 12.

The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s influential work, bringing together immersive installations, found-object sculptures, archival materials, and new commissions that explore memory, identity, and power in American life.

Howard was born in San Francisco in 1945 and raised in the East Bay, where she went on to study Afro-Haitian dance, make and sell clothing, and experiment with collage and sculpture.

Her multimedia art practice emerged from these experiences, later becoming associated with West Coast conceptual art, San Francisco funk, and a vibrant community of artists like Oliver Jackson, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders. Since the 1970s, she has used found materials and family stories to explore memory—both individual and collective.

At OMCA, visitors enter “Poetics of Memory” through a series of intimate galleries featuring Howard’s early mixed-media pieces and sculptures, along with a large video projection of a number of her public artworks.

Together, they emphasize Howard’s interest in everyday objects as powerful carriers of individual and shared stories. Highlights include collages that remix images of the artist herself; found-object sculptures like The History of the United States with a few Parts Missing (2007) that address omissions in dominant narratives; and public works like “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) that transform urban space into a meditation on access and labor.

This culminates in a richly detailed “studio” environment, where works in progress, archival exhibition flyers, historic photographs of Howard and her community, postcards from fellow artists, and other materials offer insight into her creative process and daily life.

The exhibition then opens into a high-ceilinged, dramatically lit space that brings together Howard’s signature immersive installations. On one end, “Crossings” (1997/2026) – a field of hundreds of ceramic eggs leading to an ornate mirror – suggests cycles of birth, motherhood, and transition, while drawing on the emotional echoes of the Middle Passage. On the other end, “Blackbird in a Red Sky” (a.k.a. “Fall of the Blood House”) (2002) – a red glass shack bordered by a pond – also uses reflection and transparency to draw viewers into the work and prompt consideration of themes of identity and home.

Howard’s newest video installation, “Moving Stills” (2026), repurposes never-before-seen family footage she took as a teenager on a train trip to the American South. Projected onto cascading layers of translucent fabric that stretch across an entire gallery wall, the piece immerses viewers in a layered meditation on memory, migration, and time.

The “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” exhibit will be on display through Oct. 11 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94612. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours on Fridays to 9 p.m.

This story is sourced from the Oakland Museum of California press office.

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Oakland Director Boots Dazzles Once Again in ‘I Love Boosters’

Riley’s creative output is influenced by progressive ideals. His work, which includes six albums, the 2018 film “Sorry to Bother You,” and the 2023 comedy series “I’m a Virgo,” always shows that the alienation working-class people feel is inevitable under capitalism, he recently told The Guardian.

Published

4 weeks ago

June 10, 2026

bpusa-syndication

Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Keke Palmer star in “I Love Boosters” playing now in theaters. Directed by Oakland resident Boots Riley. Image courtesy of Neon.

“I feel lonely,” Keke Palmer’s character Corvette says in the first few minutes “I Love Boosters,” the new comedy adventure film from Oakland-based director Boots Riley.

“I wish I could feel lonely,” Naomi Ackie’s character Sade responds. “Try having kids.”

“I Love Boosters” teems with kaleidoscopic colors, sharp playful social critique, otherworldly plot twists, and fast-paced action, but it’s grounded in its main characters’ simple and relatable motivations: They want to be less isolated, and more free to pursue their own creative endeavors.

They’d like to design clothes and run a fashion boutique, but, unfortunately, they’re mostly busy surviving. Corvette and Sade, along with Mariah, played by Taylour Page, hustle and scheme through their brilliant scrappy organized crime group, the Velvet Gang. The gang regularly boosts clothes in the Bay Area and sells them at discounted prices.

Riley portrays the gang in a positive light in “I Love Boosters,” echoing the sentiment and title of a song he recorded 20 years ago with his hip-hop band, The Coup, where he praises boosters for providing poor communities with nice clothes they can afford: like a Robin Hood of the ’hood. But while morally righteous, materially, the gang is troubled. Corvette is haunted by unpaid bills and fears getting kicked out of the building where she squats, a shuttered fast-food chicken joint.

One thing that separates Riley’s film from most others about criminal gangs is that the Velvet Gang’s members work for a living. Theirs isn’t a greedy fantasy of becoming filthy rich, or for one last hit: Boosting is a job that still doesn’t pay nearly enough.

Visually, the film is a mix of psychedelia, afro-surrealism, noir, and perhaps a comic book.

The villain, Christie Smith, played by Demi Moore, an evil genius billionaire and fashion designer who runs the expensive clothing company the gang boosts from. She repeatedly appears on the news to put a target on the Velvet Gang members’ backs. When the gang ends up connecting with those who Christie directly exploits –workers here in the Bay Area, but also those in sweatshops overseas– the fight against Christie can commence; and uncoincidentally, Corvette starts to feel less lonely.

I don’t want to say much about that fight, but it’s delightful. Sci-Fi elements (which appear connected to Marxist theory) enter into the narrative to tie what’s become a pretty scatterbrained story together. Grounded by Palmer’s acting, “I Love Boosters” is a total joy and a refreshing break from the typical narratives we see these days. It’s totally over-the-top, but it knows it is.