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Black History Month - African Americans and the Arts: Visual Storytelling

This guide is dedicated to exploring the Black History Month theme of 2024, "African American and the Arts."

Graphic Novels and Visual Storytelling

"I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community."

— Janet Mock, Redefining Realness

Videos

Exhibitions

Comic Books and Beyond: 1940s-2000s - African American Characters Created by African American Artists | Library of Congress

Welcome to the world of comic art, where a wide variety of visual and narrative storytelling styles have evolved from panels in early newspapers to contemporary comic images. Through unique original drawings and printed pages, this exhibition features the artistic skills of master artists and emerging talents who have created some of the most famous, funny, and frightening characters to appear in print.

 

Beyond the Black Panther: Visions of Afrofuturism in American Comics | Michigan State University Museum

Most people are familiar with Marvel’s Black Panther, and some are aware of its connections to Afrofuturism, a framework to understand how the black imagination manifests visions of freedom. This virtual exhibition will explore how themes such as aesthetics, Black feminism, and community, common to Afrofuturism, shape contemporary Black comics.