“Started in 1944 by artists and intellectuals, Le Centre d’Art is among the earliest Black art centers in the Western Hemisphere. What began as a training ground for local artists quickly became the center of transmission and dissemination of Haitian art. When the building was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake, the gardens were repurposed, using shipping containers for the collection and programs. Today, Centre d’Art is a creative and literal sanctuary for artists from around Port-au-Prince.”

“My friend the artist Yto Barrada founded Cinémathèque de Tanger in her hometown in 2006. It operates out of a beautifully restored 1930s theater known as the Cinéma Rif in one of Tangier’s main squares. As the city’s first and only repertory cinema and archive, it features films made in Northern Africa or that tell the larger story of life in the African diaspora. History feels very alive in and around the theater, and it’s lovely to meet other artists and filmmakers for a coffee at the café.”

“Seattle’s Central District is a historically Black neighborhood. Amid intense gentrification, founders Elisheba Johnson and Inye Wokoma collaborated to recover and repurpose Wokoma’s family home of many generations, creating Wa Na Wari, which means ‘our home’ in Kalabari. It is a ‘center for Black art and belonging,’ bringing contemporary art into conversation with historic preservation and Black ownership. Their annual Walk the Block festival centers Black and Indigenous performance art.”

“When we met, my husband showed me film after film by Haile Gerima and eventually took me to meet the filmmaker at Sankofa Video Books & Cafe. Shirikiana and Haile Gerima founded the shop 25 years ago to center the work of thinkers and makers of African descent. Named for Haile’s seminal 1993 film, Sankofa is ‘liberated territory’ for a still-thriving community of Black students, artists, filmmakers, and scholars who have persisted through many waves of gentrification in Washington, DC.”

“The Studio Museum in Harlem is hallowed ground. Like many Black curators of my generation, I was trained at SMH by the incomparable Thelma Golden. In 1968, a group of Black artists founded the museum, starting with its Artist-in-Residence Program. They saw the writing on the wall and understood that mainstream art museums might always be late to support, collect, and exhibit Black artists’ work. 55 years later, having launched countless careers, SMH remains central to the global art world.”

“When Peggy Cooper Cafritz and Mike Malone started Duke Ellington School of the Arts in 1974, it was not lost on them that establishing serious arts education for Black youth in Washington, DC, was a political gesture. Having grown up in the segregated South, Peggy knew that pipelines to art careers would change lives. Over its 50 years, Duke has continued to produce many of the most influential artists of our time, like Dave Chapelle, Denyce Graves, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Hank Willis Thomas.”

“Recently, a friend took me to Casa Branca, the first and oldest terreiro (Afro-Brazilian Candomblé house) in Salvador, Bahia, founded ca.1830. That evening, nearly 200 years later, we were blessed to attend a yearly ceremony for Oxalá, father orixá in the Candomblé pantheon, for whom the temple ceiling was dressed in rows of white banners. Everyone in attendance wore white and the ceremony was led by the formidable mães de santo (priestesses), dressed to the nines in gorgeous lace hoop skirts.”

“Weeksville is the site of an intentional free Black community founded in 1838 by Black investors, just 11 years after the abolition of slavery in New York. At its height in the 1850s, Weeksville had 500 families, its own newspaper, an orphanage, and churches. In 1968, artist Joan Maynard spearheaded a community preservation effort responsible for saving the remaining historic homes that are central to the present-day campus at Weeksville Heritage Center, a site for art, ecology, and history.”

“In the ’90s, Houston’s Third Ward, a historic Black neighborhood, was contending with the war on drugs. And in 1993, the artist Rick Lowe acquired a full block of shotgun houses, like those in John Biggers’ paintings. Lowe invited artists to make art in the houses and simultaneously created housing for young mothers. Thus Row Houses, today occupying five city blocks, became the model for social practice, a paradigm for organizing art and community projects at once and with equal value.”

“I was first taken to RAW Material by the late Bisi Silva. Raw Material, founded by curator Koyo Kouoh, is a center for art, knowledge, and society, featuring fascinating exhibitions and catalogues, a library, an online database, and an archive. Public programs on film, architecture, and cultural heritage are ongoing. The Ker Issa residency offers time and space for practitioners from diverse fields, and RAW Académie is a seven-week program led by a thought leader in art, theory, or curation.”