For February 2026, I am sharing a story excerpted from my new book Miami’s Art Boom: From Local Vision to International Presence, published in late 2025 by University Press of Florida. The book gathers over 100 examples of my Miami Herald writings about art, spanning the years 1987 to 2007. It provides new essays to place this historical material in a current context. With the onslaught of anti-Black rhetoric blaring from this administration, as well as the prevalence of banned books by Black authors, the following 1989 Miami Herald story may continue to pose uncomfortable questions. Does Black History Month truly make a difference? Despite other events presented during the year, does limiting the majority of annual attention to Black History in one month amount to a subtle form of segregation? Does it in effect marginalize Black accomplishments? For my story, a dancer, musician, art dealer, curator, and two museum directors offered their divergent opinions. Pictured above is the jazz singer Alice Day.
January 29, 1989
It’s like you have a little box of Black History Month things to do. And you open it up and there’s art exhibits, and dance recitals, and films, and you kind of spread things around, and when the month is over you kind of gather it together and put it back in its box until next year.
— Gary Moore, Miami-based artist
Wednesday, it’ll be February again, which means Black History Month. Around South Florida, the special events will include exhibitions of the work of Black artists throughout the Miami-Dade Public Library System, shows in college galleries, a Black film festival in Fort Lauderdale, plays about the Black experience, concerts and lectures.
But does Black History Month also mean that, when it’s March, it’s time to forget all about Black history until next year?
A number of Black artists in our community, while appreciative of the flurry of exposure they receive in February, resent the implications inherent in the attention that may come just once a year. Some believe that while Black History Month was intended to foster an awareness of African American contributions to the national culture, it has become a subtle form of segregation.
“It’s disturbing,” says Ed Love, visual arts dean of the New World School of the Arts. “You either show then, or you don’t show at all . . . If you either have February or nothing, then that’s an awful choice.”
But others find that the month’s educational value is very much needed in an age when, as musician Nicole Yarling notes, some young people think that Louis Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon.
Or, as art dealer Caleb Davis, owner of Gallery Antigua on Biscayne Boulevard, laments: “You have young kids out here throwing rocks and bottles, and they don’t even know that there are important people in their history, their culture, that have made contributions. You ought to be able to roll off your tongue the major artists, performers and prominent people of your ethnic background that you take pride in.”
A sampling of the artists’ comments reveals a story, perhaps, of what can happen when good intentions do not necessarily evolve with the changing times.
“The thing that bothers me about Black History Month is that we have to have a Black History Month, ” says jazz singer Alice Day, who hosts a radio show on WLRN and recently opened her own jazz club, Alice’s Place, in Fort Lauderdale. “Why is Black history not part of American history? Why is it not part of everyday curriculum (in the schools)? I don’t understand why this is so . . .”
Choreographer and dancer Freddick Bratcher, who studied ballet and has danced with both the Martha Graham and the Alvin Ailey companies, worries about the type of pigeonholing that could result from focusing attention on African American artists only once a year. It’s “like being labeled ‘the best Black newscaster’ instead of ‘one of the top newscasters, ‘ ” he says.
“It’s sort of like a double-edged sword, ” comments art dealer Davis.
“If there were no exhibits put on during Black History Month, there would be even fewer shows for African American artists. I think Black History Month is a good thing, but I think we shouldn’t show the works of African American artists only in February.”
Davis would like to see more exhibits throughout the year in such public spaces as the libraries and the Center for the Fine Arts, in downtown Miami. Comparing Miami to other cities with a diverse ethnic population, such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta and New York, he says: “I think Miami is anywhere between two to five years behind these other cities in terms of showing and exhibiting the work of African American and Caribbean artists.”
The New World School’s Ed Love, a nationally honored sculptor, is showing his work in February at the Coral Gables Branch Library. But Love is so opposed to the way Black History Month is observed, he usually denies requests to exhibit in February, except at institutions that showcase the work of African American artists year round.
If Black History Month “leads to the next step, where people are exhibited year round because of the quality of their work, then I think it’s fine, ” he says. “But if we’ve become satisfied, which I suspect we have, with having these monthly activities so we don’t have to do anything the rest of the year, then it’s better to not have it. Because then we are settling for too little and assuaging our consciousness and not really expanding it.”
Love says he would like to curate a show with his partner, Monifa Atungaye, that would feature African American artists using certain conventions that “would not be considered traditional African American modes, but which we think are.” He would include works related to performances based on African mythologies and Eastern rituals and invite nationally known artists such as Martin Puryear, Yvonne Pickering-Carter and Jerome Meadows. Love says he has proposed the show to several museums, including the Center for the Fine Arts, but has had no response.
Heads of some of the major local art institutions say they recognize that Black artists need more exposure throughout the year.
Dahlia Morgan, director of the Art Museum at Florida International University, who says she doesn’t curate shows “on the basis of gender and race,” points out that FIU has exhibited the work of a number of major contemporary Black artists, including Robert Colescott, Romare Bearden, Lester Johnson and Richard Hunt.
“It’s a dilemma, ” she says. “Specific exhibitions can raise the consciousness of the community, but many African American artists wouldn’t want to be exhibited in ethnic shows.”
Ira Licht, director of the Lowe Art Museum, agrees that there are problems with the concept of Black History Month.
“I hate to do Black shows for Black History Month and Latin shows for Hispanic Heritage Month, ” he says. “I’ve always tried to break through that kind of grouping so that people could be appreciated on their own.”
As to whether Black artists deserve more attention in the community, he says: “I have no idea because I haven’t been keeping tabs. I would like to see more attention paid to good artists, from whatever group.”
Asked what kind of attention the Lowe has given to Black artists, he points to the 1986 exhibition, Sharing Traditions, featuring five Black American artists of the 19th Century. He says next season, most likely in December or January, the Lowe will offer a show on African art titled Wild Spirits — Strong Medicine, which will include artifacts dealing with magic and ritual. He’s also planning a show devoted to the works of Black artist Adrian Piper, titled Reflections, 1967-87.
Neither the Lowe nor FIU staged art shows for Black History Month. But the Miami-Dade public library system did, and Barbara Young, the library’s art services coordinator, says she was well aware of the issues the exhibitions could raise.
“We’ve tried to be sensitive to the possibilities of exclusion, ” she says, emphasizing that the library has “incorporated Black artists in group shows we have throughout the year.”
“The library’s collection, which numbers about 1,500 pieces, ” she adds, “is very strong in works by Black artists.” Pieces from that collection are exhibited year-round throughout the system.
One of the Black artists being showcased at the library in February is Purvis Young, a painter who has had museum, gallery and library exhibitions year round. His work is in the library’s permanent collection. Young, who considers himself a historian of Overtown, his home for many years, says he isn’t interested in talking about Black History Month.
“I’m just an artist . . . I paint what I see, ” he says. “I paint pictures of people just reaching out, reaching for better things. It’s a lot of angry people.”
Ed (Edward) Love 1936-1999
Purvis Young 1943-2010
Alice Day 1946-2020
Ira Licht 1938-2023
