Kerry James Marshall: The Histories

This retrospective spans four decades of Marshall’s career and introduces a major new body of paintings created specially for the exhibition. Organised thematically into eleven cycles, the show explores the artist’s evolving engagement with art-historical tropes, Black identity, myth, society and narrative ambition. From early works like A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self (1980) to the 23-foot mural Knowledge and Wonder (1995) and fresh series such as Africa Revisited, Marshall asks: What happens when the Black figure is no longer marginalised but central? With brilliant colour, deep formal control, and layered cultural reference, the exhibition underscores his mission of crafting a “counter-archive” to traditional Western painting.