Arts & Culture

“Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness,” an exhibition of photographs by Zanele Muholi at Harvard’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery, is an art history textbook painted black. The series of more than 80 self-portraits of the artist challenges race and representation in visual history in striking and beautiful way.

The Theatre Community Benevolent Fund has launched a new program called CARE-oke to raise funds for artists struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic and bring local favorites back into the spotlight.

In 2017, the stirring chords of Toshi Reagon’s opera adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” filled the halls of ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Center. Three years later, Reagon has returned to build her yearlong artist residency with ArtsEmerson around the tenets of Butler’s novel.

Uncertainty is the name of the arts and culture game as Boston proceeds with the phased reopening that began the week of Monday, May 18. How successful the reopening is will dictate how and when arts institutions are able to reopen their doors. In an attempt to arm the arts community with as many tools as possible, ArtsBoston has become the regional partner in the COVID-19 Audience Outlook Monitor (AOM), an international study run by WolfBrown of audience attitudes about returning to the cultural sector.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public spaces have shuttered, but the need for stories of perseverance is greater than ever, and so Suitcase Stories has taken to the screen for virtual storytelling and community conversations.

Since the release of her first feature film “Chutney Popcorn” in 1999, director Nisha Ganatra has been on a mission to place women, people of color, and the LGBTQIA+ community at the forefront of her film and television projects.

When not playing online gigs, here’s what jazz musicians are listening to.

The city of Boston and Massachusetts College of Art and Design announced that they will be utilizing a $1.2 million grant from the Surdna Founda- tion to support artists of color through a three-year grant pro- gram called Radical Imagination for Racial Justice

The many public statues depicting African Americans speak to the history of the community in Boston.

The Alvin Ailey stage is dark this May, but the new online initiative Ailey All Access brings the famous company and their joyful dances into living rooms all over the country. The platform provides full length streaming performances, dance classes you can take from home and regular interviews with the company members.

Despite the abrupt end to their spring season, New Repertory Theatre, like many in the Boston area, has taken their programming online to keep audiences engaged. They’re also considering what should change before they reopen to the public.

Championing underserved voices through film is at the heart of the types of stories that Letia Solomon wants to tell, but it would take fours years of soul-searching before she made the leap full-time into filmmaking.