America is at a crossroads and must reconcile with its past to strengthen its future. Amidst unprecedented historical and global unrest, the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection illuminates centuries of African American intellectual, artistic, and innovative accomplishments. Crystalized and curated for over forty years by Bernard W. Kinsey, Shirley Pooler Kinsey, and Khalil Kinsey, the Kinsey Collection has been shared with over twenty-two million visitors and was the first “major African American collection to be shown internationally” (p. 28). This book “would not exist” (p. xxiii) without the Kinseys' 2016–2017 exhibition of Rising Above: The Kinsey African American Art and History Collection hosted by the University of Hong Kong Museum and Art Gallery. Engaging history and the arts allows us to envision the past, understand the present, and prepare the future. The arts are not independent of life but rather express joy, address trauma, relieve pain, and refute...
Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection
Lori M. West is an educational and public historian. Her research examines Critical Race Museology (CRM), transnational oral histories, and the Black Museums Movement. She holds a PhD in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. [email protected]
Lori M. West is an educational and public historian. Her research examines Critical Race Museology (CRM), transnational oral histories, and the Black Museums Movement. She holds a PhD in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. [email protected]
Lori M. West; Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection. African Arts 2021; 54 (4): 94–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00620
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