Image: Cy Twombly Gallery, The Menil Collection
The Menil Collection is presenting 'John Akomfrah: The Hour Of The Dog' through October 11, 2026, in the museum’s Main Building. The immersive installation is a six-channel color video work by Sir John Akomfrah that runs 51 minutes, with screenings beginning every hour on the hour and the final showing each day starting at 6 p.m.
According to the museum, the work explores the history of youth-led Civil Rights–era activism in the American South from 1954 to 1963. The installation focuses on how participants pursued racial equity through nonviolent marches, protests, boycotts, and voter-registration efforts, placing Akomfrah’s multi-screen approach in direct conversation with a period of organizing that reshaped public life across the region.
The Menil says 'The Hour Of The Dog' was co-commissioned by the Menil Collection and the Baltimore Museum of Art. The exhibition is co-curated by Michelle White, senior curator at the Menil, and Cecilia Wichmann, curator and department head of contemporary art at the BMA, with Oscar Flores-Montero, the BMA’s curatorial assistant of contemporary art. The installation at the Menil is credited to John Akomfrah, with the video work dated 2025 on the museum’s exhibition page and 2026 on its exhibition still.
Akomfrah’s project is presented in the context of an artist whose work has long engaged memory, post-colonialism, time, aesthetics, and diasporic experience. The Menil’s exhibition page identifies him as a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective, which began in London in 1982 with David Lawson and Lina Gopaul. The site also notes that Lawson and Gopaul continue to collaborate with him today, alongside Ashitey Akomfrah, under the name Smoking Dogs Films.
The artist’s exhibition statement on the Menil page connects the work’s subject matter to broader ideas of remembrance and mourning. He says: “Activism is not confined to what happens in the streets; it’s bound up with who and how we remember, who and how we mourn, and how we dream forward.” The installation’s emphasis on collective action and historical memory aligns with the museum’s presentation of the work as a study of Civil Rights activism and its strategies.
The Menil lists a number of related public programs around the exhibition, including a curator talk with Michelle White on July 19, a film screening and panel discussion titled 'SNCC, Sit-Ins, and The Strange Demise of Jim Crow' on July 30, a panel discussion titled 'Holding Freedom: Ghana in the Menil Collection' on Aug. 6, and a lecture titled 'Stokely in Houston—Black Power, Pan-Africanism, and the Diasporic Imagination' on Aug. 13. The exhibition itself remains on view through Oct. 11 at the Main Building, 1533 Sul Ross Street, Houston.
