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Past, Present, Futures

August 19 – December 20

Banner showing two paintings with the words Art Exhibition Past, Present, Futures art exhibition, August 19 - December 20 and social media handles: for Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center is a space where art is the gateway to a conversation on human rights, Holocaust education, and genocide. The Fall 2026 exhibition Past, Present, Futures explores how the artists Samuel Bak, April Bey, Ken Gonzales-Day, Jeannette Ehlers, Letitia Huckaby, Harmonia Rosales, and Shawn Theodore play with the traditions of European portraiture to center other histories, reveal the role art and art history have played in the formation of historical narratives, and celebrate the resurgence of culture after oppression.

Bibliography Past, Present, Futures

Overview

Adegboyega, Adeleke Emmanuel. “An Exploration of Slavery, Colonialism, and Cultural Identity in Biyi Bandélé’s Yorùbá Boy Running.” Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Communication Studies, 2, no.1 (2026) https://doi.org/10.63456/jllcs-2-1-9

Adeniyi, Emmanuel. Dispersion of the Yorùbá to the Americas: A Fatalist Hermeneutics of Orí in the Yorùbá Cosmos – Reading from Tutuoba: Salem’s Black Shango Slave Queen. Yoruba Studies Review, 5 (2021): 1-19.

Alfen, Peter van. "Head Hunting": Emile Monier, Malvina Hoffman, and the rhetoric of race at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale, Paris.” ANS Magazine 12.4 (2013): 32-53.

Ater, Renée. Race Experts: Sculpture, Anthropology, and the American Public in Malvina Hoffman’s Races of Mankind. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

Bak, Samuel, and Lawrence L. Langer. Landscapes of Jewish Experience : Paintings. Pucker Gallery, 1997.

Bak, Samuel. Painted in Words : A Memoir. Indiana University Press, 2001.

Bak, Samuel, et al. Between Worlds : The Paintings and Drawings of Samuel Bak from 1946 to 2001. Pucker Art Publications, 2002.

Bak, Samuel, and Ayala Tamir. Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center Records. University of Nebraska at Omaha, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library, Archives and Special Collections, 2020.

Ben Yosef, Ute. Art and Life : The Story of Samuel Bak. Pucker Art Publications, 2023.

Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now. Exhibition May 11, 2018 - March 17, 2019, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Bogle, Donald. "Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films." Viking Press, 1973.

Burrows, D., & O’Sullivan, S. Fictioning : the myth-functions of contemporary art and philosophy. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474432412

Cohen, Alina. “Interview with Shawn Theodore.” Foundworks. https://foundwork.art/dialogues/shawn-theodore

Dery, M., ed. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 1994.

Diedrich, Maria, et al. Black imagination and the middle passage. Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1999.

Dunne, Anthony , & Raby, Fiona. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.

Farrington, Lisa E. African-American Art : A Visual and Cultural History. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Gardullo, Paul, et al. In Slavery’s Wake : Making Black Freedom in the World. Edited by Paul Gardullo et al., Smithsonian Books, 2025.

Green, Tara T. Reimagining the Middle Passage : Black Resistance in Literature, Television, and Song. The Ohio State University Press, 2019.

Jokic, D. “Césaire and Fanon on Fascism: The “Boomerang Effect” Beyond the Metropole.” Constellations32, no. 4 (2025): 601–611. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12809

Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 2008.

Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.

Holbert, N., Dando, M., & Correa, I. “Afrofuturism as critical constructionist design: building futures from the past and present.” Learning, Media and Technology, 45(4) (2020): 328–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1754237

Kern-Foxworth, Marilyn. "Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow." Greenwood Press, 1994.

Lothian, Alexis. Old Futures : Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility. NYU Press, 2019.

Muller, Christopher. “Exclusion and exploitation: The incarceration of Black Americans from slavery to the present.” Science 374, 282–286 (2021). https://muller.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum1856/files/muller/files/muller_exclusion_exploitation.pdf

Nagano, Paul. BAK. Paintings of the last Decade. Abernack Fine Arts: New York, 1974.

Nannipieri, Luisa. “A Conversation with April Bey.” World African Artists United, 2024. https://waau-art.com/highlights/a-conversation-with-april-bey/

Nolan Fewell, Danna, and Gary A. Phillips. “From Bak to the Bible. Imagination, Interpretation, and Tikkun Olam.” Arts (New Brighton, Minn.), vol. 21, no. 1, January 2009: 21–30.

Ojo, Olatunji. “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Local Ethics of Slavery in Yorubaland.” African Economic History, vol. 41, 2013, pp. 73–100.

Onwumah, A. C.. et al. « A sociological review of the effects of slavery on Yoruba nation.” IFE PsychologIA, 27(2), (2019): 180–189.

Peabody, Rebecca. “Race and Literary Sculpture in Malvina Hoffman’s ‘Heads and Tales.’” Getty Research Journal, no. 5 (2013): 119–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41825351.

Pettit, Becky & Gutierrez Carmen. “Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 2018 May-Sep;77(3-4):1153-1182. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12241

Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. "White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture." Yale University, 1992.

Pricco, Evan & Gillen, Doug, “April Bey: A Trio to Atlantica.” Juxtapoz. Art & Culture, 2024. https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/magazine/features/april-bey-a-trip-to-atlantica/

Procopio, Lucia. “Curating Racism: Understanding Field Museum Physical Anthropology from 1893 to 1969.” Theory and Practice, Vol. 2, (2019).

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1st ed, Pantheon Books, 1978.

Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois. “"Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles": Silhouettes and African American Identity in the Early Republic.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 149, No. 1:3 (2005), pp. 22-39

Smithsonian Museum, “Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans.” https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans

Strait, Kevin Michael Angelo, et al. Afrofuturism : A History of Black Futures. Edited by Kinshasha Conwill, Smithsonian Books, 2025.

Theodore, Shawn. Website. https://www.shawntheodo.re/bio

Troutman, Philip, & Jennifer Van Horn. “Seeing Flora’s Profile as Portrait.” Panorama. Journal of the Associations of Historians of American Art, 8:1 (2022).

Turner, J.K. “Redefining Blackness: April Bey.” Andscape, 2020. https://andscape.com/features/black-artist-series-redefining-blackness-april-bey/

Udo, Emem Michael . “The Vitality of Yoruba Culture in the Americas.” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 41(2) (2020): 27-40. https://doi.org/10.5070/F7412046833

Weems, C. M., Luckett, S. D., & African-American Arts : Activism and Aesthetics. (2020). African American arts : activism, aesthetics, and futurity (S. D. Luckett, Ed.; 1st ed.). Bucknell University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9781684481569

Willis, Deborah, et al. Black : a celebration of a culture (1st American ed.). Hylas Pub, 2004.

Willis, Deborah. Posing beauty : African American images from the 1890s to the present (1st ed, 2009). W.W. Norton & Co.

Willis, Deborah, et al. Envisioning Emancipation : Black Americans and the End of Slavery. Temple University Press, 2014.

Womack, Ytasha. Afrofuturism : The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture. First edition., Chicago Review Press, 2013.

Yaszek, L. “Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, and the History of the Future.” Socialism and Democracy 20 (3) (2006): 41–60. doi:10.1080/08854300600950236(open in a new window).

Video links:

Colonial Swag I: Queer Visibility, Coloniality, and April Bey's Art

https://www.youtube.com/live/CUIGuGcnw-8?si=luN-PxiIHzLCMTlr

Colonial Swag II: Queer Visibility, Coloniality, and April Bey's Art

https://www.youtube.com/live/ubrMRmSnwWw?si=hCDP5jCUmryJOKFL

In Conversation: Jewelle Gomez, April Bey, and María Elena Ortiz

https://youtu.be/TbXwmmFAN7g?si=xTKcuAhKpULZYgoB

LACC Visual & Media Arts - Artist Lecture Series: April Bey

https://youtu.be/KuWeaWc_ZWw?si=VCqFir-ye1_P7QEw

Public Art Series: Ken Gonzales-Day on “Profiled”

https://youtu.be/hqDbIegNsz4?si=Gr2lLJ0pPDCaAMcc

at home: Artists in Conversation | Ken Gonzales-Day