The National Museum of African American History and Culture has opened a new exhibit highlighting and exploring the concept of Afrofuturism.
“Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures,” which opened Friday, highlights the achievements of Black people who have created bestselling science fiction literature, headlined popular space TV shows and used technology to create chart-topping songs.
The exhibit’s co-curator Timothy Anne Burnside said many people don’t realize the impact of Afrofuturism on culture.
“One of the main messages is how present Afrofuturism has been. What this exhibition does is provide a foundational experience for visitors in the first part to just get into what Afrofuturism even is,” Burnside said in an interview.
“Afrofuturism” is a term used to define the aesthetic juxtaposition of African American culture and science fiction, centering history and futuristic elements of expression like art and music. It is an “evolving concept expressed through a Black cultural lens that reimagines, reinterprets and reclaims the past and present for a more empowering future.”
The term was coined in 1994 by author and cultural critic Mark Dery in his book “Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture.”
“This exhibition is a way to look at how Afrofuturism has been practiced throughout history and across the diaspora, and the ways it is expressed, historically and in the present, through art, literature and activism,” said curator Kevin Strait in a statement from the museum.
“We hope that visitors learn more about this topic by seeing the various ways that Afrofuturism connects with and influences our popular culture and gain a broader understanding of Afrofuturism, not simply as a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy, but as part of a larger tradition of Black intellectual history.”
The new exhibit will feature three sections: The History of Black Futures, New Black Futures, and Infinite Possibilities. Each section focuses on the past, present and future of how “Black people imagined the cosmos.”
“This is a way for our visitors to really explore how this has already, maybe, been present in their lives,” Burnside said. “This idea of world-building is a very strong theme throughout the exhibition.”
Additionally, the exhibit will include objects from OutKast, Octavia Butler and Marvel’s “Black Panther.”
Some of the exhibit’s highlighted items are a typewriter used by science fiction author Octavia Butler, a cape and jumpsuit worn by André De Shields from The Wiz on Broadway, Trayvon Martin’s flight suit from Experience Aviation, the red Starfleet uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Nyoto Uhura on Star Trek and George Clinton’s wig from Parliament-Funkadelic.
WTOP’s Gigi Barnett contributed to this report.
