In December Northwestern art history assistant professor Antawan I. Byrd launched the most ambitious project of his career — Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica — at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Boasting over 350 objects by artists spanning Africa, North and South America, and Europe, Project a Black Planet is the first major exhibit to examine various manifestations of Pan-Africanism, a cultural movement and ideology that promotes Black unity across Africa and the African diaspora. The exhibit invites visitors to imagine a world characterized by “unfettered, unconditional cooperation and solidarity among Black people,” says Byrd ’13 MA, ’22 PhD, who organized the exhibition in collaboration with Adom Getachew, Elvira Dyangani Ose and Matthew Witkovsky.
As part of his research, Byrd and his colleagues carried out research and symposia across Africa, North and South America, and Europe over a five-year period. Byrd describes Pan-Africanism as a “utopian movement” that arose in the 1920s as a response to histories of transatlantic slavery and Europe’s colonization of Africa during the late 19th century.
“Profound global shifts were taking place after the United States’ passage of the 13th amendment in 1865, followed soon after by Jim Crow policies. And then, beginning in 1884, a handful of European countries established colonies throughout the world, with Africa being a key domain. So, for Black people at that time, the world was dramatically upended. … And any hope of an emancipatory future for previously enslaved Black people across the world was blunted by the reality that Africa had been colonized,” he explains.
“One of the ways people responded to these cataclysmic changes was by developing a robust idea that’s premised on unity and cooperation and the understanding that the fates of Black people in the African diaspora are intertwined with those living on the continent of Africa,” he says. There was an understanding that liberation required alliances across vast geographies.”
The exhibit’s entrance features high-quality facsimiles of Art of the Negro (1952), a six-panel mural by Black American artist Hale Aspacio Woodruff that is permanently installed at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum. “The mural tells an epic narrative of Black cultural achievement, tracing a lineage from antiquity to the mid-20th century and unfolding across Africa and the African diaspora,” says Byrd. Credit: Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In addition to painting, photography, sculpture, film and sound art, the exhibit includes about 150 pieces of ephemera organized chronologically from the 1920s to 2024. “We wanted to show how Pan-Africanist ideas circulate through ordinary objects — like magazines, newspapers, albums, or posters, etc. — to demonstrate how people would engage with Pan-Africanist concepts in ordinary, quotidian ways,” says Byrd. “The main galleries are organized in a nonlinear fashion, so we thought it would be helpful to offer a section that gives audiences a sense of how Pan-Africanism has progressed over time.” The ephemera include pieces on loan from Northwestern’s Herskovits Library of African Studies and the McCormick Library of Special Collections.
Project a Black Planet ran in Chicago through March 30. It will move to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona this fall, before traveling to venues in London and Brussels.
“Ideas around unity, solidarity, self-determination and freedom are super important today,” says Byrd. “I hope that visitors engage with — and are inspired by — the proposals these artists are making for a better world.”
Explore some of Byrd’s favorite exhibit pieces below.
Jeanne, Martiniquaise (1938) by Loïs Mailou Jones. Oil on canvas. Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gift of the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust.
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Africa Restored (Cheryl as Cleopatra) (2003) by Kerry James Marshall. Polystyrene and latex on plywood, with inkjet prints mounted on laminated acrylic. Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Susan and Lewis Manilow.
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