Hello, Los Angeles:

I’m culture writer Carolina A. Miranda, and you have until the end of the week to see Waning Crescents at Oxy Arts in Highland Park, which features work by members of Meztli Projects, a collective supporting Native and Indigenous artists. Bonus: There are beautifully designed protest posters by members of the collective that are available for free as you enter the show.

Meanwhile, summer is here and this is what we’ve got going on:

• Contributor Leigh-Ann Jackson weighs in on a show about Black cowboys
• An interview with contemporary artist Awol Erizku
• The front porch concert you didn’t know you needed

Keep on scrolling!

The featured image at top features cowboy boots worn by Herb Jeffries in the c. 1937 film Harlem on the Prairie, as seen in Black Cowboys: An American Story at the Autry Museum. (Gift of Herbert Jeffries, Autry Museum)

IS ANYBODY GOIN' TO SAN ANTONE?

by Leigh-Ann Jackson

Keenan Abercrombia ("Chef Kee") at the Compton Cowboy Ranch. (Compton Cowboys)

Growing up, my familiarity with Black folks in the Wild West basically amounted to watching Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and learning about Buffalo Soldiers in high school. (That’d be the 19th century Black servicemen who participated in military exploits like the Spanish American War). So I was eager to fill my knowledge gaps by visiting Black Cowboys: An American Story, which opened at the Autry Museum last month.

Organized by San Antonio’s Witte Museum, the show’s mission is to offer “a clearer picture of the Black West and a more diverse portrait of the American frontier.” Unfortunately, my visit left me wanting — even if I came away knowing more than before, and armed with a few solid leads on how to fortify that knowledge.

That’s because Black Cowboys is like walking through a Wikipedia page. The show is heavy on text — walls are lined with simplistic paragraphs about slavery, the cattle industry, and everyday life on the range, accompanied by reproductions of grainy archival photographs. Fabled figures such as legendary rodeo performer Bill Pickett and cowboy scribe Nat Love get VIP treatment. Meanwhile, a cluster of illuminated columns acknowledge lesser-known individuals, from formerly enslaved ranch workers to champion calf ropers. 

More physical artifacts would have enhanced the museum-going experience. But what you get is a pair of woolen chaps from the early 1900s; branding irons and a model of a six-shooter revolver here, an interactive replica of a chuck wagon and a pair of video installations there. 

But the exhibition does fill a void at the museum. Downstairs in the permanent collection, there’s an installation chronicling the life of storied lawman Bass Reeves, one of the first Black deputy marshals in the US. Aside from that, there’s not a lot of real estate given to the experiences of Black folks, save for an alcove dedicated to Black pioneer communities that’s so dimly lit I needed my phone’s flashlight to see the photos and captions. (By comparison, the ongoing Imagined Wests, which explores the role of pop culture in the creation of Western myth, is more inclusive — and better lit!) 

A 2011 Bill Pickett Rodeo trophy saddle. (Courtesy of DeBoraha Akin-Townson)

Curators at the Autry expanded on the original, more Texas-centric  Black Cowboys exhibition with a wing focusing on Black trailblazers who shaped California. This includes displays about Los Pobladores, the Black and Afro Mestizo settlers who helped found the city of Los Angeles on behalf of the Mexican viceroyalty; Pío Pico, who served as the last governor of the area under Mexican rule; and, of course, the Buffalo Soldiers. Also included were modern-day keepers of the culture. 

This half of the show packed the most punch, with the following additions piquing my curiosity the most:

L.A.’s contemporary cowboys ride out

Black Cowboys Community Profile, a video compiled by the Autry, bears out the enduring legacy of Black equestrianism in Southern California. In a series of one-on-ones, the founders and facilitators of groups like Urban Saddles and Compton Cowboys discuss their push to get young kids riding horses, learning time-honored skills, embracing nature, and flouting negative inner-city stereotypes. I also learned about the gone-too-soon community ranch, The Hill, and made a note to watch the 2020 documentary about it.

The LA Times also rounded up more ways to delve deeper into the South Central scene.

A still from the video Black Cowboys Community Profile. (Autry Museum)

An installation view of Chanel Rhodes' barett and wig for horses. (Autry Museum)

Lights, camera, bad-ass cowpokes

Naturally, there’s a section devoted to the entertainment industry — because LA. In addition to props and costumes from early Black Western films, as well as Netflix’s more recent The Harder They Fall, there’s a small video screen commemorating 1970s cinematic offerings that fly in the (white male) face of Hollywood’s mainstream images of cowboys. 

Watching the montage of movie clips inspired me to plan a backyard film fest where my guests and I watch Shaft star Richard Roundtree play a vengeful gunslinger in Charley One-Eye, munch popcorn while Blacksploitation beauty Vonetta McGee robs frontier banks in Thomasine & Bushrod, and root for Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee as they stick it to The Man on the dusty trail in Buck and the Preacher.

Film posters line a wall at the Autry. (Leigh-Ann Jackson)

🤠🤠🤠

Black Cowboys: An American Story is on view at the Autry Museum through Jan. 4th, 2026; theautry.org.

Plus, Carolina wrote about the diversity of cowboys for the New York Review of Books last year.

AROUND THE INTERNET 

A work from painter Vincent Valdez's series, Excerpts for John — as seen at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in February.  (Carolina A. Miranda)

It’s Carolina again! I’ll take it from here…

• The Lucas Museum has acquired a series of works by painter Vincent Valdez (who I’ve written about in the past).
• Agents from the Department of Homeland Security made a puzzling visit to a Puerto Rican museum in Chicago. (Puerto Ricans are US citizens.)
• The Museum of Jurassic Technology suffered smoke damage after a small fire.
• LA artists Shizu Saldamando and Barbara Carrasco are among the recipients of this year’s Latinx Artist Fellowship.
• Artist Awol Erizku, subject of a solo show at the California African American Museum, sits down for an interview with writer Evan Nicole Brown.
• Painter James Griffith, whose principal medium is tar from the La Brea Tar Pits, is opening a new exhibition of works at Mount Wilson Observatory this weekend.
• A new book about fashion designer Claire McCardell chronicles her many sartorial innovations. (AKA: Pockets for women!)
  
• Pablo Helguera on the dreaded artist statement.
• There’s a good piece by Philip Clark on a new biography of composer Arnold Schoenberg in the New York Review of Books. (I love the accompanying photo.)
• Music critic Nate Chinen writing about the complex multicultural musical roots of Bruno Mars is ridiculously insightful.
• Signing off with this front porch concert by George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, 35-minutes of pure musical joy.

Thank you for reading.  🙏

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