Arts & Culture

This is the 21st interview in a weekly series presenting highlights of conversations between leading Black visual artists in New England. In this week’s installment, artist Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper talks to artist Reginald L. Jackson.

Spring and summer in Boston are short and precious seasons. To take full advantage of the blossoms and warm temps, consider attending one of the diverse festivals taking place across Boston over the next few months.

Toni Stone was the first woman to play regularly in a major-level professional baseball league. Turned away from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League because of her race, she played on men’s teams in the Negro Leagues in the 1940s and 50s.

For the second year in a row, Roxbury will dedicate a day to centering the literary arts, as the Greater Roxbury Book Fair returns to the Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library.

This is the 20th interview in a weekly series presenting highlights of conversations between leading Black visual artists in New England. In this week’s installment, artist James Perry talks to artist Percy Fortini-Wright.

On a recent Friday, Love Clerveau, a sixth-grader at Mother Caroline Academy in Dorchester, stood in a hallway in her school, making peace signs with each of her hands, a tentative grin across her face. Next to her was a mirror image of sorts: a self-portrait she made as part of an art program.

In “Morning, Noon, and Night,” local playwright Kirsten Greenidge tackles post-pandemic emotions through the lens of a mother-daughter relationship. We got through the pandemic, the play posits, but did we get through all the trauma and emotions that came with it?

In the newly renovated jewelry gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, delicate tiaras float in glass cases next to ornate brooches and avant-garde necklaces. Viewers are drawn to the shiny metals and bright colors, but underneath each piece, an intricate structure of metal, wood, paint and plexiglass keeps those precious artworks posed in a seemingly effortless manner.

This is the 19th interview in a weekly series presenting highlights of conversations between leading Black visual artists in New England. In this week’s installment, artist James Perry talks to artist Rob “Problak” Gibbs.

Amid the tensions that brewed following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Ava DuVernay read journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” published that summer. The book, DuVernay admitted, had been sitting on her coffee table for a while before she decided to read it.

There’s only one country that can claim to be the birthplace of humanity. This country today is home to over 75 ethnicities, and is the only African nation to resist colonial rule. This country is Ethiopia.

When Dorchester native Kai Clifton saw “A Strange Loop,” it was the first time he had ever seen a queer Black character represented at the heart of a musical. After years of studying and participating in theater, Clifton finally felt like he belonged.