The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will present Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence, the artist’s new, monumental body of work created against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the global rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The exhibition had its U.S. premiere earlier this year at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and is on view at the MFAH from November 19, 2023, to May 27, 2024. Expanding upon American artist Kehinde Wiley’s “Down” series from 2008, An Archaeology of Silence meditates on the deaths of young Black people slain all over the world. These 26 works stand as elegies and monuments, underscoring the fraught terms in which Black people are rendered visible, especially when at the hands of systemic violence.

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence Exhibition