Arts & Culture

Relocation, resettling and assimilation are components of the African diasporic experience that have significantly impacted the artists in “States of Becoming,” an exhibition of contemporary African artists at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. 

Local basketball players have a new reason to hit the courts at Malcolm X Park in Roxbury. Three new murals on the courts, created by local, national and international artists make the space one for art and community gathering as much as for pickup games and friendly rivalries.

“Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” hit movie theaters in 1991, fueling a popular cultural fantasy of teenagers running their lives without adult supervision. The story got a contemporary makeover in the 2024 remake, directed by Wade Allain-Marcus and centering a Black family.

When the Martha Graham Dance Company comes to New England this month, it’ll be for the first time in almost 20 years. As it ramps up to its centennial in 2026, the New York-based institution will bring four performances to Boston celebrating and honoring the legacies of icons like namesake founder Martha Graham.

What if Sleeping Beauty suffered from long COVID and was battling deep-seated fatigue rather than a wicked spell? What if audiences identified more with the misunderstood beast than the delicate beauty?

On a recent weekday, the Boston Children’s Chorus rehearsed for its new season. Gathered in a carpeted church room, more than two dozen young people — basses, tenors, altos and sopranos — sang together harmoniously, accompanied by the piano, rotating through several musical pieces, all linked by the season’s theme: “People, Get Ready.”

Mission Hill’s Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help will soon come alive with the jazzy riffs and foot-tapping notes of Duke Ellington’s catalog.

Playwright Mfoniso Udofia has been telling the stories of her characters in the Ufot family since 2009. Now, for the first time, her Ufot Family Cycle of nine plays will be performed consecutively at The Huntington over the course of two years.

Spanning four centuries of music and multiple genres of dance, Complexions Contemporary Ballet performed two shows last weekend at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston, presented by Global Arts Live.

“On the Eve of Abolition” is set in 2047, just 23 years from now, in what is formerly the U.S. and Mexico. In this future, prison abolitionists have successfully fought the carceral system and now find themselves in a position to shut down the last remaining prison.

Three books — a chronicle of Black Wall Street and biographies of W.E.B Du Bois and scholar Merze Tate — are the recipients of this year’s MAAH Stone Book Award, a collaboration between the Museum of African American History and the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation that recognizes scholars whose work explores facets of African American history across the country.

Meditations on forgiveness, harm and repair in father-son relationships are explored in artist Titus Kaphar’s directorial debut, “Exhibiting Forgiveness.”