Exhibits

Black music is the soundtrack to the struggle for self-determination and liberation of Black people in the New World. It is the musical history of our evolution in this country. Black music has been key to shaping American culture. Africans stolen from their homeland were forced to give up their languages, rituals, names, and the drum. Yet, they retained the essence of these things and created spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and hip hop - musical forms whose powerful influence is undeniable on the cultural fabric of this county and beyond. Black music is a connection to our past and a source of inspiration, a space-creating force that encourages and seeds dreams for the future.

In 1968, when singer Archie Bell said, “Hi, everybody. I'm Archie Bell of the Drells of Houston, Texas” on the hit record Tighten Up, he helped put Houston's music scene on the world map. The music for this song was created and performed by the TSU Toronadoes, a group formed by students from Texas Southern University in the heart of Third Ward, aka “The Tre.”

In the exhibition Black Stereo, I am telling the stories and connection that African American artists and institutions of Greater Houston have with the city and the country. The works presented take the forms of concert posters, showbills, and album covers, infographics meant to highlight, educate, and entertain like music. The message is in the music. - Tierney Malone

About Tierney Malone

Malone is a visual artist and modern-day storyteller who blends African American history and pop culture to create mixed media works that challenge contemporary culture and politics. He is the host of “Houston Jazz Spotlight,” a weekly program on Radio KPFT.

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Opening Reception for BLACK STEREO with Tierney Malone | May 10, 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Artist Talk | Tierney Malone: BLACK STEREO | June 21, 3:00 - 4:00 PM

Events for Everyone

Events for Kids

EXPLORE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Black Music in Houston Collection (MSS 0159)

The Black Music in Houston Collection contains newspaper articles, programs, correspondence, and photographs of African American musicians and musical activity in Houston during the 1980s. Between WWI and WWII, Houston became a regional center of jazz music, a style popularized during the 19th century. Houston experienced a flourishing music scene from the 1960s to the 1980s with a variety of prevalent genres including blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues. Blues music was popularized in Houston during the 1940s with Gold Star Studios, more recently known as Sugar Hill Studios, who produced several prominent musicians including Lighting in Hopkins and Bobby Blue Band.

Texas Jazz Archive (RG E 0071)

In 1986, Arnett Cobb and his daughter Lizette Cobb created the Jazz Heritage Society of Texas as a non-profit education, literary, and cultural arts organization. Arnett Cobb expressed an interest in creating a jazz archive. In 1987, the Jazz Heritage Society of Texas partnered with the Houston Metropolitan Research Center (now Houston History Research Center) to document the under-represented jazz scene of Texas by establishing the Texas Jazz Archive. The strong points of this collection are the oral history interviews and the number of photographs chronicling these musicians' professional careers.

Jazz Education Inc. (RG 0041)

The Jazz Education Inc. Collection contains records related to the operations of Jazz Education Inc. between 1990-2022. Jazz Education Inc. was established in 1970 by Bubbha Thomas, to provide training and educational opportunities to children about the history and culture of jazz music, which were unavailable at both private and public institutions. The organization also sponsors four main programs: Music in the Schools (Jazz and Poetry Series), Summer Jazz Workshop, SJW Scholarship Jazz Brunch, and the Houston International Jazz Festival.

Carlos Johnson Papers (MSS 0051)

This collection contains the personal and professional records of Charles “Carlos” Johnson during his career as a percussionist. Charles Harold “Carlos” Johnson was born on August 31, 1945, to Ernestine and T.Z. Johnson in Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas. He attended Kashmere Junior and Senior High School and performed under Conrad Johnson. He attended Texas Southern University and performed with the TSU Jazz Ensemble. During his 35-year career as a percussionist, he adopted the stage name “Carlos” and in addition to jazz, he performed with classical, country, rock, and pop musicians. Johnson taught music, performed as a solo artist through Congos By Carlos, and was part of music groups such as D.R.U.M. (Divine Rhythm United Motion).

CHECK OUT THE CATALOG

Kid/Juvenile

• Adoff, Arnold, Roots and Blues: A Celebration
• Dell, Pamela, The Blues: Birth of an American Sound
• Earl, C. F., Hip-Hop: A Short History
• Koopmans, Andy, The History of the Blues
• Loney, Andrea J., The Double Bass Blues
• Mour, Stanley I., Innovators of American Jazz
• Myers, Walter Dean, Jazz
• Wheeler, Lisa, Jazz Baby
• Williams, Jarrett, Hip-Hop: The Beat of America
• Winter, Jonah, How Jelly Roll Morton Invented Jazz

Adult

• Bradley, Andy, House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios
• Corcoran, Michael, Ghost Notes: Pioneering Spirits of Texas Music
• Corcoran, Michael Joseph, All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music
• Faniel, Maco L., Hip-Hop in Houston: The Origin & the Legacy
• Steptoe, Tyina L., Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City
• Walker, Lance Scott, Houston Rap Tapes: An Oral History of Bayou City Hip-Hop
• Wood, Charles Roger, Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues

Watch

• When Houston Had the Blues
• Beyonce

Listen

• Rhino Hi-Five: Archie Bell & The Drells
• Arnett Cobb
• Thelonius Monk: The London Collection Vol. 1
• The Dixie Hummingbirds
• The Crusaders

Library of Things

• Portable record player

   

This exhibition is generously supported by Houston Public Library, Houston Public Library Foundation, and the City of Houston.

Space for Us: Afrofuturism and the Poetic Imagination is a multidisciplinary exhibition that seeks to usher in a new Houston by exploring both the historical and contemporary demands of organizers, poets, archivists, and community members within this city. Pairing photos and materials from the archives of the African American History Research Center at the Gregory Campus with multilingual poems exploring ideas of home, community and imagined futures, audiences will experience the urgency of worldbuilding, using the tools we have and the tools we create, to actualize a liberated Houston. Alongside these poems and archives, a poetic tapestry of interviews from Black community leaders across Greater Houston will showcase the present organizing efforts that move through, beyond, and alongside the page to create the Houston we deserve. Through this exploration of poetry, preservation and movement building, Space for Us is a poetic manifesto of this audacious city we aim to see in our lifetime and long after.

Facilitated as part of Aris Kian Brown's community outreach project as 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate, this exhibition aims to challenge the boundaries between art and organizing, protest and poetics, imagination and demand. Audiences will be able to engage with the demands of Houstonians in real time, allowing the urgency of poetry to serve as a tool for contemporary organizing, worldbuilding, and language justice for communities in Houston fighting for all marginalized people.

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Opening Reception - March 20, 2025 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Public Poetry Reading Series

Creative Writing Club for Adults

Rap & Poetry Workshops for Teens

Summer Reading for Grown-Ups: Talking Poetry

EXPLORE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Ben Desoto Photographs Collection (MSS 0118)

The Ben Desoto Photographs Collection documents his career in Houston as a freelance photographer and as a photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post from the 1980s to 2020s. This collection contains over 30,000 photographic items including photographs, negatives and slides, newspapers, and notebooks that depict life in minority communities and the early stages of gentrification in historically Black neighborhoods and hip hop and rock music during the 1980s and early 1990s. His work captures Freedmen's Town, the Allen Parkway Village and Direct Exposure youth projects along with local social problems including homelessness and poverty in his Understanding Poverty Project.

Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes Collection (RG 0047)

The Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes began as a dream of Anna Dupree. Dupree moved to Houston from Galveston in 1916. When the Eliza Johnson Home opened in June 1952, it was largely due to her determination and resources, as well as support and encouragement of her husband, Clarence (C.A.) and others in the black community. The goal of the Home - located on a 35-acre tract off Chocolate Bayou Road in the historically black neighborhood of Sunnyside - was basic: to provide a place “where our old people enjoy kind, human care and freedom from fear and want in their remaining days.”

Black Photographic Collection (MSS 0137)

This collection is composed of mostly photographic images having to do with African Americans in the Houston area from 1896 to 1968. Except for its singular focus on images of African Americans, this collection is miscellaneous. Several of the photographs are of Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion and a Juneteenth Parade float. Some images are tintypes of well-dressed people in Third Ward and downtown Houston during the early 20th century.

CHECK OUT THE CATALOG

Adult

• Anastacia-Reneé, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere
• Brookins, KB, Freedom House: Poems
• Duplan, Anais, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture
• Hersey, Tricia, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto
• National Museum of African American History and Culture, Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn (ed.), Houston Noir

Works by past Poet Laureates

• Davidson, Robin, City that Ripens on the Tree of the World
• Davidson, Robin, Luminous Other
• Mouton, Deborah D.E.E.P., Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth
• Schwartz, Leslie Contreras, From the Womb of Sky and Earth
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Better With You Here
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Falling in Love With Fellow Prisoners: Poems
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Houston We Have a Problema
• Zepeda, Gwendolyn, Monsters, Zombies + Addicts: Poems

RELATED MEDIA

This exhibition is generously supported by Houston Public Library, Houston Public Library Foundation, and the City of Houston.

On April 15, 2019, the world watched in horror as fire engulfed the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the most treasured structures of the last seven centuries and a cultural landmark of universal value. Not only does Notre-Dame embody the soul of global--and French--heritage, it is also a testament to centuries of belief, history, art, and architectural brilliance. Its restoration transcends mere reconstruction; it signifies humanity's commitment to to preserving the cultural treasures that bind us all.

The ceremonial reopening of Notre-Dame on December 27, 2024, reinforced the importance of preserving and cherishing our global heritage for today, and for the future.

This exhibit celebrates the extraordinary skills of the craftsmen and artisans responsible for bringing the cathedral back to life. Because of their talents, Notre-Dame de Paris has been saved to inspire future generations.

CHECK OUT OUR CATALOG

Adult

• Notre-Dame de Paris by Alain Erlande-Brandenburg
• Notre-Dame de Paris: History, Art, and Revival from 1163 to Tomorrow by Antonia Felix
• Notre-Dame: A Short History of the Meaning of Cathedrals by Ken Follett
• The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
• Notre-Dame: The Soul of France by Agnès Catherine Poirier
• The Madonna of Notre Dame by Alexis Ragougneau

Kid/Juvenile

• Anthony and the Gargoyle by Jo Ellen Bogart
• The Bees of Notre-Dame by Meghan P. Browne
• Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction by David Macaulay

Watch

• The Battle for Notre Dame
• Notre Dame in Paris
• Rebuilding Notre Dame
• Saving Notre Dame 

This exhibition is generously supported by Houston Public Library, Houston Public Library Foundation, City of Houston, Archaeology Now, Villa Albertine - Consulat Général de France à Houston, Alliance Française de Houston, Rebâtir Notre-Dame de Paris, Maison Luquet, Ateliers Perrault, Handshouse Studio, Houston Area Blacksmith's Association, and the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.