This Black History Month, galleries and museums across the United States are featuring Black artists who are tackling complex subjects such as housing policy, interpersonal relationships, and colonialism with nuance and visual verve. Their chosen forms range from intricate figurative paintings and vibrant color fields to lush installations and intricate assemblages. Such social issues and boundary-pushing aesthetics are at the center of the following exhibitions: eight exceptional shows spread across the country.
Lanise Howard
“In Aludria”
Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami
January 31st–February 28th
Ladies in Waiting, 2025
Lanise Howard
Mindy Solomon Gallery
The North Star (Polaris), 2025
Lanise Howard
Mindy Solomon Gallery
“In Aludria” marks emerging artist Lanise Howard’s third solo exhibition with Miami’s Mindy Solomon Gallery. The artist presents oil paintings alongside mixed-media gouache and colored pencil drawings. These deftly rendered pieces use saturated reds, blues, and yellows to “[create] an analogous world where hidden histories, personal allegories, and multiple periods of time merge,” as Howard said in the exhibition’s press text.
The show debuted at an inflection point in the painter’s career: Howard’s work was recently featured in “Giving you the best that I got,”a group exhibition at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. In 2023, Howard was featured in Artsy’s Foundations art fair for emerging artists, and in 2019, Howard received the Women’s Painters West Award.
Amoako Boafo
“I Bring Home With Me”
Roberts Projects, Los Angeles
Through March 21st
Lemon Slip Blouse, 2025
Amoako Boafo
Roberts Projects
Patterned Dress, 2025
Amoako Boafo
Roberts Projects
Over the past few years, Amoako Boafo has emerged as one of the preeminent voices in Black figuration. The Ghanaian painter crafts distinctive portraits, layering oil paint to create uniquely textured depictions of Black skin. His canvases have received commercial and critical acclaim: In 2024, the artist had a solo exhibition entitled “Amoako Boafo: Proper Love” at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and in 2020, Boafo was featured in The Artsy Vanguard.
Now, Boafo is presenting his third solo show with Roberts Projects, a stalwart Los Angeles gallery. The exhibition places Boafo’s peculiar paintings in a recreation of the artist’s studio in Accra, built to scale within the gallery.
“Sanctuary”
Fridman Gallery, New York
Through March 7th
Untitled, 2025
Lewinale Havette
Fridman Gallery
a place where no birds sing, 2025
Will Maxen
Fridman Gallery
The artists featured in “Sanctuary,” a group exhibition at New York’s Fridman Gallery, use drawing, painting, photography, and other media to ponder the mental impact of migration. The show features several Black artists, including Lewinale Havette, a multimedia mid-career artist who portrays Black women and the places where they can safely gather, critical sites of kinship for those in strange new environments.
Another exhibition highlight is a tapestry by established multimedia artist Dindga McCannon, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, and other prominent institutions. McCannon’s woven assemblages often feature found materials such as mudcloths, leather, cowrie shells, and paints as they relate to Black history and womanhood. McCannon’s aesthetic themes and her community work—she co-founded the group Where We at Black Women Artists, which provides members with childcare and financial support—have spurred dialogue about issues that face marginalized groups. The show feels especially pertinent right now, given the U.S.’s fevered arguments about immigration.
Seydou Keïta
“Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens”
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Through May 17th
“Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens” is the most expansive North American exhibition of the Malian photographer’s oeuvre to date. Keïta’s black-and-white portraits give the viewer an important glimpse into life in Mali’s capital, Bamako, from the late 1940s through the early 1960s; the photographer captured the city’s politicians, artists, academics, and more. Keïta shot these portraits at an important point in Mali’s history leading up to the country’s official independence from France in 1960.
Now, “A Tactile Lens” unites these historical images in one place. The exhibition includes more than 280 pieces, including prints, portraits, testimonials from Keïta’s family, personal items, and textiles that evoke the backdrops and fashion in the photographs. Keïta died in 2001, and “A Tactile Lens” confirms sustained attention to the artist’s work. Keïta’s photographs were recently featured in solo shows at the Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris in 2022 and 2023 and at Tate Modern in 2008.
Rodney McMillian
“Some lives in the sunshine”
Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles
Through March 1st
double rainbow, 2025
Rodney McMillian
Vielmetter Los Angeles
Inspired by domestic spaces and modernist traditions, Rodney McMillian creates sculptures and paintings with house paint, chicken wire, bed sheets, and other media. His solo show at the Los Angeles gallery Vielmetter features sculptures, works on paper, and paintings that examine the U.S.’s history of discriminatory housing policies and redlining, which denies financial services to residents of areas with high minority populations. McMillian’s deft visual representations of difficult political topics have gained renown in both galleries and museums.
In 2024, he participated in “RETROaction (part two),” a group show at Hauser & Wirth, and in spring 2026, McMillian will mount a solo exhibition called “A Son of the Soil” at the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, which will be curated by Michael Neumeister. McMillian’s adroit commentary feels particularly relevant today, given that many recent political elections—like the recent New York mayoral race—have focused on housing policy and discrimination.
Deborah Roberts
“Consequences of Being”
Flag Art Foundation, New York
February 12th–April 5th
Deborah Roberts uses photography, printmaking, and other techniques to create collages with found materials and fragmented depictions of Black people. Roberts’s work has recently appeared in group exhibitions at renowned institutions like the Philadelphia Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Now, Roberts will have her first institutional solo show in New York at the Flag Art Foundation. Titled “Consequences of Being,” the exhibition includes both works on paper and paintings, and, for the first time, ceramic sculpture.
“Firelei Baez”
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago
Through May 31st
This solo exhibition marks Firelei Baez’s first mid-career survey in North America. The Dominican multimedia artist creates compelling, elaborate installations that unpack the history of colonialism in the Caribbean. Baez analyzes racial and gender dynamics throughout her paintings, weaving together vivid, surreal portraiture with depictions of dense foliage.
This show builds on Baez’s recent art world momentum. In 2019, the artist was featured in The Artsy Vanguard. In 2022, Baez’s work was featured in “The Milk of Dreams,” the main exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale; in 2023, she joined Hauser & Wirth; and in November 2025, her piece Untitled (Colonization in America, Visual History Wall Map, Prepared by Civic Education Service) (2021) sold for $1.11 million at Christie’s, breaking a record at auction. This exhibition speaks to the breadth of Baez’s oeuvre and includes acrylic paintings, ink drawings, and installations from the past two decades.
Suzanne Jackson
“Suzanne Jackson: What is Love”
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , San Francisco
Through March 1st
“Suzanne Jackson: What is Love” is the artist’s first late-career retrospective. The exhibition speaks to the prolific nature of Jackson’s practice, featuring more than 80 paintings and drawings from the 1980s. The artist works across a broad range of media, from ephemeral paintings to large-scale textiles and fluid drawings. Jackson’s diverse oeuvre indeed embraces unconventional materials, and she’s celebrated for her three-dimensional tapestries made from layers of acrylic paint.
“What is Love” follows the artist’s inclusion in “Just Above Midtown,” a 2023 group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and the 2024 Whitney Biennial.
