Joy Bailey-Bryant (Managing Director, US at Lord Cultural Resources), has written about the need to celebrate the importance of Black history year-round, as well as created a round-up of some of the most exciting news commemorating Black History Month 2018.

Gail discussed the reinvention of museums, how are they facing their colonial roots, and connecting with communities at TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, along with Silvia Forni (Royal Ontario Museum), Gordon Shadrach (artist) and Andrew Hunter (Art Gallery of Guelph).

This month, classrooms across the U.S. had the opportunity to attend a free “electronic field trip” to the National World War II Museum, for a special live event sharing experiences of black service members with younger generations. The event (which was live but is now available on demand), Fighting for the Right to Fight, featured World War II survivors and experts, and aimed to “analyze war-era racial injustices, examine artifacts from the museum’s collections and explore WWII historic sites in order to share stories of struggle, setbacks, triumphs and heroism of individuals who changed history.”

State and local officials toured the site of the proposed Sing Sing Prison Museum in Ossining on Thursday. The $50 million museum is hoped to begin construction next year, and have the museum open in time for the 200th anniversary of the prison in 2025.

The Office of Strategic Services Society has selected the Kincora development in Loudoun County for its National Museum of Intelligence and Special Operations. The 56,000-square-foot facility, which is anticipated to open in 2020 aims to "educate the American public about the fascinating history of American intelligence and special operations and their critical role in preserving freedom."

Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is named for Arthur Schomburg, who was known for collecting and imparting information about African history and culture. Today, the library branch’s Digital Schomburg initiative continues to meet these goals in cyberspace.

The City of Brampton is looking for ideas on how to shape its first culture master plan. Local planners have embarked on drafting a new strategy for the delivery of municipal cultural services and investments over the next 10 years.

Lord Cultural Resources in partnership with Nordicity is proud to have been selected to develop Brampton’s Culture Master Plan. The plan, begun in late 2017, is expected to be revealed to the public in June.

Just in time for Black History Month, Google and the National Museum of African American History and Culture are debuted a new 3-D art installation that highlights culturally significant historical items. 3-D scanning was used to recreate objects in the exhibition, which includes items that either couldn’t be transported because they’re too fragile or aren’t on display due to a lack of physical space in the museum.

City council voted 35-3 to turn Old City Hall into a museum of Toronto, predicting tourists and Torontonians will flock to the exhibits. At present, it’s estimated that the museum would cover about 110,000 square feet of the 406,000-square-foot building. Councillors spoke enthusiastically on the “incredible opportunity” and how the museum could “return old city hall to the people.”

The building of such a museum has been a long-term Lord Cultural Resources initiative, including contribution to the recommendation currently under review by Toronto’s City Council.

Lord Cultural Resources vice president Brad King talks about what to expect when moving from academia to the non-academic workplace in this 2-part discussion.

The Ontario government is pledging a little over $6 million for waterfront development projects in Thunder Bay, Ont., including $5 million to help the Thunder Bay Art Gallery realize its dream of moving to a new location.

Marrakech’s Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (Macaal) opened this past month. One of the museum's founders, Othman Lazraq, says he doesn’t have concerns about following too soon in the footsteps of 2017’s opening of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz Mocaa) in Cape Town. In fact, he says that “with the opening of Zeitz Mocaa we will have more initiatives like this on the continent ... we need 100 more like them.”

India’s 3,000-year-old tradition of holistic healing has been increasingly plundered by the West to sell expensive aloe vera face creams and $6 cups of turmeric-flavored “golden milk.” Now Narendra Modi, India’s 67-year-old, yoga-loving Prime Minister, wants to reclaim — and capitalize on — those culinary and medical traditions.

The newly released film Black Panther engages with, among many highly relevant contemporary topics, the complicated relationship between museums and audiences affected by colonialism. Indeed, this online museums journal argues that the institution of the museum is depicted in the filrm as “an illegal mechanism of colonialism, and along with that, a space which does not even welcome those whose culture it displays. And is there anything incorrect about that?"  What steps can museums professionals take to ensure a better dialogue going forward?

In the summer of 2016, curators at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art featured an unusual and somewhat irreverent piece of installation art as a bit of an experiment: What would visitors think of it? What they discovered about the museum’s audience and their interests has led to changes at the museum, both provocative and praised.

Decades after an infamous misstep, the "Here We Are Here" exhibit of African-Canadian contemporary art has arrived at the AGO. Says Silvia Forni, the curator of the ROM’s African collections and a co-curator on this show, “I think the community is finally starting to feel more welcome. We really needed ‘Of Africa’ — it gave us time to think, and to think with different people. Every step of it led us here.”

A new category of apps is emerging on the market, with the aim of connecting intimidated buyers with art for sale and democratizing the market. Online art sellers like Art.com and Saatchi Art use virtual and augmented reality to try out works at home, while others let you tap into your phone’s camera roll to see what your own photos would look like hanging in your hallway. The New York Times tests out a selection of what’s available.

Earlier this month, official portraits of former United States President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama were unveiled at an emotional and historic ceremony at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. This editorial praises the artists, both of whom are African American, for their success in capturing the first African Americans elected to serve as president and first lady in a building built by slaves, as well as their “deft, thoughtful comments on race and representation in America that also provide an intimate encounter with the psyche of their individual subjects.”

You may know about Black History Month, but what about Black Future Month? CBC Arts turned to Jamaican-born Nalo Hopkinson, award-winning science fiction author, to find out more about what the future means — and why it's so exciting to her.

A group of 21 street artists emerged victorious in their suit against the developer who whitewashed their work from the historic Queens, New York graffiti mecca known as 5Pointz. The ruling provides closure for one of the most-watched legal battles in the art world. But because of how the legal win frames the moral rights of the creators, the impact of the suit may well echo far into the future.

Cathleen McGuigan, Architectural Record editor-in-chief, introduces the publication’s most recent issue by discussing how “contemporary civic buildings remain crucial to the life of the city— and some turn out to be catalysts for reviving urban areas that have been in decline.”

In part of an ongoing series highlighting the contributions of black women around the globe who are making a difference, VICE talks to 5 community builders in New York City. In fields as diverse as dance, data science, art, and neuroscience, these women are developing unique initiatives to champion underrepresented voices and advocate for their communities.