Image: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, New York
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will screen ‘Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story’ on August 1, pairing the documentary with an onstage conversation with Kwame Brathwaite Jr. The event is scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m. offsite at MOPA @ SDMA in San Diego, extending MCASD’s programming beyond its own galleries for a one-night presentation centered on Brathwaite’s life and legacy.
According to the museum’s event listing, the film is directed by Yemi Bamiro and runs 98 minutes. It focuses on the Harlem-based photographer, freedom fighter and activist who helped popularize the phrase ‘Black is Beautiful.’ The screening is followed by a 20-minute conversation at 8:40 p.m. with Brathwaite Jr., moderated by Amy Crum, associate curator at MCASD.
The museum’s description presents Brathwaite as a central figure in both photography and activism. It says he took 500,000 photographs across a 60-year career, devoted to celebrating the joy and beauty of African American life. The film, the listing adds, explores his role in the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement and his commitment to Black cultural affirmation through image-making.
MCASD’s background text on the event situates Brathwaite within a politically engaged family and traces an early catalyst for his work to seeing the image of Emmett Till in Jet magazine. The museum says that experience helped set him on the path to photography and sharpened his awareness of the violence of the South and the power of photography as education. It also notes that he formed AJASS, the African Jazz and Art Society and Studios, with friends who shared his interest in jazz and Black art.
The page further describes the Harlem jazz nights that AJASS hosted, saying they drew figures including Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. It also highlights Brathwaite’s creation of the Grandassa models in 1962 and the Naturally shows in Harlem, which the museum identifies as a key part of the film’s narrative. The event listing says the documentary includes surviving Grandassa models telling their stories.
Brathwaite Jr., identified by MCASD as the director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, appears in the post-screening discussion. The museum says he manages his father’s photographic archive and collaborative projects tied to themes of activism, politics, fashion and music. It also notes his previous curatorial and lecturing work, including a touring exhibition titled ‘Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite,’ which is currently on view at The Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and is set to travel to the Columbia Museum of Art and the New-York Historical Society this year.
The screening lands in a busy stretch for MCASD’s summer programming, alongside its current special exhibition ‘Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,’ which is on view through August 9. The museum’s website lists additional August events, but the Brathwaite screening is presented as a standalone offsite program at MOPA @ SDMA, 1649 El Prado, San Diego, on Saturday, August 1.
