Four decades of Black presence, memory and imagination take centre stage in Paris.
16 September 2026
What happens when Black figures, histories and everyday lives take their rightful place within the grand narratives of art history? For Kerry James Marshall, the answer is expansive, monumental and deeply transformative.
‘Kerry James Marshall: The Histories’ brings together 70 works spanning more than four decades of the American artist’s practice, including eight new paintings made especially for the exhibition.
Known for his striking large-scale compositions, Marshall centres Black life with a visual language that draws from Western painting, popular culture, Afrofuturism and science fiction. From the legacies of the Middle Passage, Civil Rights and Black Power to the intimacy of salons, parks and domestic spaces, his work challenges the absence of Black presence in art history.
Organised across eleven series and cycles, the exhibition moves between painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, tracing Marshall’s ongoing engagement with representation, memory and the power of imagining otherwise.
Following presentations in London and Zurich, ‘The Histories’ marks the first major exhibition in France devoted to the artist.
This exhibition will be on view at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris from 18 September 2026 until 24 January 2027.
