02/20/2026
Happy Friday! Today we're highlighting some of the selections on our Black History Month display, which you can check out on the first floor of the library!
1. Virgil Abloh: "Figures of Speech" by Virgil Abloh
Virgil Abloh was an American fashion designer, artist, and entrepreneur, founding companies such as Off-White, Pyrex Vision, and serving as the creative director of Louis Vuitton Menswear. Abloh significantly impacted fashion by blurring the boundary between streetwear and high fashion. The book “Figures of Speech” acts as a “user manual” for his career. It features essays, interviews, and over 1,800 images from Abloh’s personal archives, covering his work from his time in fashion, including Off-White and Louis Vuitton, as well as collaborations with artists such as Takashi Murakami. Additionally, it explores his work as an art director and designer, alongside numerous musicians.
2. “Back to Fort Scott” by Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and filmmaker. He rose to prominence in the 1940s and 1970s for his photojournalism, the first Black photographer to work for Life magazine. He covered Black American life, the civil rights movement, race relations, and poverty. Back to Fort Scott is a photo essay that follows Gordon Park as he goes back to his hometown, Fort Scott, Kansas. “Back to Fort Scott” was one of Park’s early photo assignments at Life magazine, as Kansas was in the middle of the debate of segregated education after the passing of Brown V Board of Education. His subject matter for this book was his old classmates who went to his all-Black Plaza school, and their friends and family.
3. Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: Brazil
Kehinde Wiley is a New York-based artist, known for his large-scale portraits of Black people inspired by the painting style of the Old Masters. In painting everyday Black subjects in the style of the Old Masters, with heroic poses and grand backgrounds, he aimed to portray black people in a setting they hadn't seen before in classical art. This book features 22 portraits of young Black and Afro-Brazilian males from the Rio de Janeiro favelas, depicted in poses inspired by Brazilian public monuments. “If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.” -Kehinde Wiley.
4.“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual and artistic movement of African-American music, dance, art, literature, theatre, and politics. Their Eyes Were Watching God, set in Florida in the early twentieth century, follows Jane Crawford, an African American woman in her forties, as she recounts her journey to self-discovery and empowerment through her experiences with love and life’s joys and tragedies.
