(Tag bylines with individual items.)

It’s the first time since the 1970s that black art, history and political life have come together in such a broad, profound and diverse way. That convergence was evident in the farce of “Chappelle’s Show”; on the pair of albums D’Angelo released 14 years apart. You can see the imprint of the Barack Obama presidency on “Black Panther”; Black Lives Matter on Beyoncé; the country’s prison crisis on Kendrick Lamar. You can sense that convergence haunting the fiction of Jesmyn Ward.

For eight years, all sorts of black artists sailed through the White House, and shaped the depiction of black America, by thinking transcendently, trenchantly, truthfully. They adjusted the way the entire country can look at itself.

So we asked 35 major African-American creators from different worlds (film, art, TV, music, books and more) to talk about the work that has inspired them the most over the past two decades: “Atlanta,” “Moonlight,” “Get Out,” “A Seat at the Table,” “Double America 2,” and on and on. (These are edited excerpts from the conversations.)

From the start, black people have been at the center of American popular culture — essentially because white people placed them there, through imitation and mockery and fascination. Ever since, the struggle for black artists has been to wrest control of their own culture, to present themselves, in all of their complexity, diversity, innovation and idiosyncrasy, and represent one another, as rebuke, as celebration, as advancement.

So while the power these artists have attained might be a breakthrough, the primacy energizing their art is centuries old. Maybe these two decades of fertility and surprise constitute new territory. But, as these artists are about to explain, they amount to what someone like Beyoncé knows well: homecoming.

“Lemonade” — album and film by Beyoncé (2016)

KERRY WASHINGTON (actress): I think “Lemonade” really was so culture-shifting in terms of gender roles, in terms of fidelity, in terms of how we think about marriage today, how we think about hip-hop today, how we think about feminism, how we think about power. Visually, musically, but also sociopolitically, anthropologically, “Lemonade” is a game changer. It’s just so big.

It really was like a new version of womanism: What it means for a black woman to take on this role, and what it means for a black woman whose husband cheats on her — and she stays with him — to call herself a feminist. How she walked that was just tremendous. And what she reveals about being a career woman and being a working mother in that piece is also so profound.

I watched it the night it came out. My husband and I were on the couch, and one of my cousins from the Bronx texted me, probably 10 minutes in, and was like, “There’s no way that Jay-Z signed off on this.” And then later, there’s Jay in the bed, reading the newspaper, fully co-signed. It was a real testament to the vulnerability that is possible in black love, and what partnership can really look like, what healing can look like, what courage in a marriage can look like. Trust is so important.

“good kid, m.A.A.d city” — album by Kendrick Lamar (2012)

TA-NEHISI COATES (author, journalist): So much of art is related to when you encounter it. I can never hear anything the way I heard “Illmatic” [Nas’ debut album from 1994]. That album spoke to the neighborhood that I came up in. I wasn’t the character on that album. I didn’t have the same envy or love or lust for the streets. “good kid, m.A.A.d city” — that sounds like me. Because, man, you got somebody that’s actually quite conflicted about the environment they’re born into. They don’t think the environment is that great. Maybe Nas didn’t either, but there was a braggadocio he had about it. The narrator in “good kid, m.A.A.d city” is a kid who is basically trying to cope with his environment. That just felt like me. If you strip the hood away, it’s not clear to me that this kid would be sad the hood was gone, or that he would have any longing to go back.

My son at that point was 12 years old. So he was only beginning to develop an aesthetic. That was the first album where he was like, “Man, this is great.” And I was like, “Yeah, it really is great” — not, “This is great and I’m just trying to be into what you’re into.” I didn’t have the same visceral feeling [as when I heard “Illmatic”] — that’s like falling in love. When I heard “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” it couldn’t hit me the same way, but goddamn, it did hit. It hit hard.

I think Kendrick makes the most emotionally mature rap I’ve ever heard. He has levels of vulnerability: Watching people get out of the hood and being jealous of them, because you think there’s only room for X number of people to make it out. I mean, who the hell confesses to that?

Sometimes you hear stuff that’s reminiscent of the ’90s and it doesn’t feel like it has advanced. It’s just redoing Wu-Tang or Nas. But Kendrick took what he was supposed to from all of that and did something totally different. I have a great admiration for him.

“Get Out” — movie written and directed by Jordan Peele (2017)

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL (artist): That was a phenomenal piece of work. It did everything that I thought a film like that was supposed to do because it seemed like real cinema. It wasn’t a movie; it was cinema. When you hear him talk about the film, you can see that he’s a student of cinema.

Having a good idea doesn’t mean that the good idea is successfully realized, and so people tend to fall back on whether the thing was worthwhile to do, much less if it was successful in that. And I thought this was a particularly successful film, because it was driven by great writing and great cinematography. Now, I didn’t feel that strongly about “Us”; I thought there were a lot of weaknesses in that. But you understand that this is somebody who knows exactly what needs to be done. And in “Get Out,” he knew exactly what needed to be done.

Oftentimes you see a trailer for a movie, and you say, “Oh, I don’t need to go see that. Because I see where they’re going with this and I don’t need to spend much more time [with it.]” But there was something about the imagery that was projected in the trailers for “Get Out” that mattered. And of course, Daniel Kaluuya is no small part of it. He is a powerful presence on the screen. It was a kind of edge-of-your-seat movie. You didn’t know exactly where it was going to go. But every time it went through another place, it made perfect sense within the context of that movie, in the story he was telling. And it was never telegraphed so far ahead that you felt like you could write the end of the script before it even got there.

Black social media

DESUS NICE (comedian): This rise of black social media is kind of overlooked. Before there was Black Twitter, message-board culture in 2000 was huge. That’s where we were just hanging.

When you go to a job, you have orientation and you talk to everyone and then you see the other black employee. And then y’all do the head nod, and figure out the little culture right there — that’s kind of what we were doing on the internet.

Okayplayer, the website, was one of the most influential — people are probably going to go back and look at that as one of the most influential websites on the internet for our culture.

Questlove made Okayplayer. We used to call him Poppa on it. There were so many rappers, so many poets. People were making graphics.

But Heben [Nigatu] and Trace [Tracy Clayton] and a lot of people who are really popping right now, on Black Twitter, we all started there. We were babies! Just writing little posts.

And it’s not so much that website, but I think the experience of black people niching out their own little section on social media, that definitely shifted [things]. I would even say it made black culture more singular; before everything was more regional. New Yorkers had their own slang. But now you can have a meme and every black person in the United States — or in the world — can understand it, because of social media.

Toni Morrison — author

OPRAH WINFREY (media executive): I have Toni on the heart right now, and I can’t think of anybody else who actually has had the cultural impact that she has in the past 20 years, because I believe that she’s the root spring from which all other influences that I might name flow, like Colson Whitehead, Ta-Nehisi [Coates], Jacqueline Woodson. I think her work has resonated to other artists and nonartists alike for decades and I don’t think it can be measured or quantified, actually. Because as Maya [Angelou] taught me, your legacy isn’t one thing. It’s every life you touch. So, I think that from “Beloved” to her later works like “Love” and “A Mercy,” which weren’t as popular, up until her most recent essays, [“The Source of Self-Regard”], they stand as a really indefatigable testimony to the resilience of black life.

She spoke from a black woman’s voice that heretofore had been silenced and shamed; she was able to magnify and give voice to our stories about common folk whose stories would have otherwise stayed buried. She was on the front lines of the fight to make beauty and justice in a complicated world. I am so glad her work remains and the work continues.

“Love &amp;amp; Basketball” — movie written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (2000)

ANGIE THOMAS (author): It’s probably my favorite movie of all time. The fact that we got a coming-of-age story about a black girl and it didn’t include violence, trauma or anything like that, that was just — one, it was mind blowing. Two, it was eye-opening. Three, it was reassuring. I often say “Love &amp;amp; Basketball” kind of gave me the green light to tell stories.

The film told me that somebody like me could tell a story about somebody like me. There aren’t a whole lot of movies or books about black girls coming-of-age. Let’s just be real. I remember seeing “Love &amp;amp; Basketball” on the big screen, and saying to myself, “Wow, somebody was able to make a movie about a black girl like this.” This black family, they weren’t in the hood. As somebody who’s written those stories, there’s nothing wrong with that. But she has a fully formed family. Her parents are together. I was seeing a story about a black girl and she wasn’t the sassy best friend; she wasn’t the ghetto girl.

And to see that, it validated me and it validated the stories that I want to tell. So when I was writing “The Hate U Give,” I looked at “Love &amp;amp; Basketball” and I was like, you know what? I’m going to put bits and pieces of that into Starr, so you have her as a basketball player. And I wouldn’t have felt like I could’ve done that if it weren’t for “Love &amp;amp; Basketball.”

“12 Little Spells” — album by Esperanza Spalding (2018)

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH (actress, playwright, academic): I’ve been getting in on Esperanza Spalding and what she’s doing. When we look at real life we see profound divisions in our culture. We see our people, my brothers and sisters, struggling, not educated, in the grips of gun violence and so forth. We can celebrate an artistic explosion, but I’m also very aware of the desperate situation of folks.

I did pay a lot of attention to “12 Little Spells.” I was able to read the text and talk to her about it. To look at that text up close, it’s incredible. She’s just a very good writer. It was great to be able to dive into that, to prepare to interview her [at the Strand bookstore] and look really, really closely at that work; I was able to see it twice as well. She wants it to be a healing piece, and I have to say that is something I’m hearing from younger artists — this notion of searching for ways that their work can be healing.

“Flavor of Love” — reality show (2006-2008)

“Scandal” — television drama created by Shonda Rhimes (2012-2018)

ISSA RAE (writer, producer, actress): One television show that influenced me in a negative way but now I feel had a profound impact was “Flavor of Love” [on VH1]. I remember watching it with my friends in college and getting increasingly angry that it was one of the few portrayals of black women in [pop culture]. But then I look back on it fondly in terms of how it influenced black meme culture. It was really impactful for me in terms of feeling like, “I have to get up and create alternative images.” But I also recognize the impact that it had just in terms of pushing black women’s voices to the forefront — I always feel conflicted about that.

The [first episode of Season 2 showed] a woman defecating on the floor during the elimination session. I was just like, “Wow, a black woman really defecated on the floor just because she wanted to win Flavor Flav’s heart, but also just to have this opportunity to be on TV.” But also the control that producers had in shaping her narrative is something that stood out to me.

I never watched “Grey’s Anatomy” [on ABC]. I was introduced to Shonda Rhimes just because she’s a black woman with a popular show. And I didn’t know what a showrunner was or what that meant. And then when “Scandal” came along, to see that impact and those skills, it was like, “Wow, she has a dream job that I want. She’s sitting up here and putting black women at the forefront in a big, different way, in a way that I respect and a way that people admire.”

“Flavor of Love” influenced me to write the characters that I wanted to see. And Shonda and “Scandal” made me realize that this is bigger than that. I can create worlds, and there’s a business behind it that can ultimately be positive. It doesn’t have to be centered around negative tropes.

“Double America 2” — artwork by Glenn Ligon (2014)

KENYA BARRIS (writer, producer): It turns America on itself, abstracting it. That really struck me because I find that abstract art is something black people don’t really get to do. We’re not given the opportunity to do black art that way. And in this piece, Glenn turns that notion on its head. For me, the simplicity of it is radical and confrontational.

I had seen [an earlier version called “Double America”] represented in books and articles. But [this one] really stood out to me when I finally saw it in person at the Broad museum in 2014. There is something about seeing Glenn’s work in person that is essential to understanding it. The piece itself is active, and I think to experience it sparked something specific in me. I felt that it spoke directly to the black identity — the duality of the black experience and the access black people have to art itself.

“Moonlight” — movie adapted and directed by Barry Jenkins (2016)

JABOUKIE YOUNG-WHITE (comedian, writer): It was wild seeing that it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that you saw black people being properly lit in TV and film — and lit to the point where it elevates the aesthetic, to the point where these people look so picturesque and painting-like. “Moonlight” not only represents a huge change in narrative representation and storytelling, but also visually it changed the landscape.

I went by myself to watch it when I was back home in Chicago, and I remember toward the end, the scene where he [Chiron, played by Trevante Rhodes] is talking to his mom, I was weeping because as a gay man I was like, “Wow, this is what everyone has been experiencing when they have been watching movies: They have been just seeing themselves on the screen, seeing something that’s happened to them — not having to do mental gymnastics or an exercise in empathy to be able to put yourself in a character’s shoes.” That character, it was already me, so that sensation was overwhelming because it literally was like I was seeing a new color that I had never seen before. It had been there the entire time and I didn’t know it existed.

“Room for Improvement” — first mixtape by Drake (2006)

MISTY COPELAND (dancer): I grew up in a diverse area in Los Angeles, but then entering into the ballet world, which was so white, I felt so isolated so much of the time and music was always that one tangible thing I had. Drake had a couple of mixtapes that really spoke to me. I think that black people are often put in this box. Black women have to be the caretakers. We have to be strong. You can’t really show vulnerability — especially black men. I am biracial and my husband is also black and Jewish, so to see this biracial Jewish guy speaking his truth, being open, vulnerable and honest, and making a space for black men not to be in one emotional box was to me the next level of where music should be going.

Amber Hasan — musician, author

Shea Cobb — poet, musician

LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER (artist, academic): I’ve been on the ground here in Flint, Michigan, ever since I did my first photo essay about the water crisis, which was published in the September 2016 issue of Elle magazine. Amber Hasan, her rap song “No Filter” was a big hit here that helped people understand the intensity of the water crisis. Her song inspired my photo essay.

Shea Cobb also did a poem that ran online with the Elle piece, about her daily reckoning with lead-contaminated water and trying to protect her daughter. Cobb and Hasan formed an artist collective called the Sister Tour with artists, activists and entrepreneurs that advocate for other women, artists, activists and entrepreneurs. These have been the women on the ground, keeping the narrative out there and trying to get access to clean water. These are everyday folks that people are not thinking about because they don’t know they’re out here doing grassroots initiatives, and fighting for the quality and access to clean drinking water. As an artist, to stay with photographs and storytelling that lead to a solution, and to play a key role, and to be able to fund that solution, I couldn’t ask for more.

“Glory” — song by Common and John Legend (2014)

Bryan Stevenson, author

HARRY BELAFONTE (activist, singer, actor):

Q: What interested you about “Glory,” that collaboration between John Legend and Common?

A: There’s a consciousness that [John Legend and Common] brought to the material, which I think was a bit unusual among high-profile pop artists — to do things that were dealing with social recall and definition. “Glory” was a kind of contemporary black — not protest, but black anthem, I guess is the best word.

I grew up in a time when music that came from the black voice was filled with reflections that deeply represented the black sense of life in America. The [Harlem] Renaissance gave us people like Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday — a host of artists that became huge sang to the plight of black people and the black experience. And I thought that was a rich gift to American culture.

Q: And you see “Glory” as a kind of harkening to that?

A: Yes. It’s a kind of black homage to the best that’s in us.

Q: What do you like about Bryan Stevenson’s memoir “Just Mercy,” the story of his fight to appeal the sentence of a man convicted of murder?

A: I would identify him as a notator of history. What appeals to me about “Just Mercy” is that it relates to the human condition. He and a lot of the young men and women I’ve dealt with [as an activist] are moved by the sense of social responsibility and consciousness.

I’m thinking [of people like] Isabel Wilkerson, [who wrote] “The Warmth of Other Suns” [2010, about the migration of blacks from the South]. And James McBride, who wrote “The Good Lord Bird” [2013], fiction about a young black kid traveling with [the abolitionist] John Brown. That to me was quite offbeat and unique and rewarding. [These three authors] are calling upon history to reflect on it.

Q: So they are picking up the baton from an earlier generation in terms of consciousness and activism.

A: Look, black culture has always reflected the hopes and the aspirations of black people. Take a great artist like my favorite of all, Huddie Ledbetter — Lead Belly. What I love about Lead Belly was his rawness, his directness. And I think that a lot of artists today are beginning to reflect social preoccupation. For a long time, we were just about the characters of pop culture. But now we’re coming back to looking at a deeper resonance.

“Coconut Oil” — song by Lizzo (2016)

AUDRA MCDONALD (actress, singer): I was introduced to Lizzo by my daughter playing that song. The more I started to understand Lizzo and her art, and her embracing all that she is — and empowering women — it impacted me. It has had a huge impact on the way that my daughter sees herself and the way she embraces all that she is — I think Lizzo is leading a revolution in that regard. It’s a genius song! She’s saying, I thought I needed this man, I thought I needed that, and all I needed was coconut oil — basically saying, “all I needed was self-care.” That’s a powerful and necessary thing in our world today, especially for young women and girls and POC.

“Atlanta” — television series created by Donald Glover (2016 to present)

LENA WAITHE (writer, producer, actress): “Atlanta” made me want to be better. Very few things that I watch fall into that [category]. I remember watching it in London on my computer, and being like, “Oh, OK, the game is no longer the same. The game has changed.”

The African-American Art Shaping the 21st Century

Over the past 20 years, a new vanguard of African-American creators has helped define the 21st century. Jordan Peele. Ta-Nehisi Coates. Kara Walker. Ava DuVernay.

Ethan Hawke as John Brown

Over the last decade, in movies like “Before Midnight,” “Born to Be Blue,” “Maudie,” “Juliet, Naked” and “First Reformed,” Ethan Hawke has quietly emerged as perhaps our boldest and most distinctive screen actor. That’s reason enough to be excited about the Showtime miniseries “The Good Lord Bird” (Feb. 16), based on James McBride’s irreverent National Book Award-winning novel, in which Hawke takes on his first major television role, starring as abolitionist John Brown. More reasons: Wyatt Russell of “Lodge 49” as the Army officer J.E.B. Stuart and Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass.

Pop That Crosses Borders

Angelica Garcia was born in California, though she now lives in Richmond, Virginia; her family came from Mexico and El Salvador. Her brashly determined second album, “Cha Cha Palace,” is due Feb. 28. Garcia’s 2016 debut album, “Medicine for Birds,” on Warner Bros., leaned toward guitar-centered roots-rock, but her new one, on the independent label Spacebomb, defies formats. Garcia flaunts her bicultural Latin-American heritage, singing about “wearing my roots and flying this flag.” She switches between English (mostly) and Spanish. She cites Latin cultural touchstones and favorite foods. She considers spirituality and practicality, and she recognizes the sweat and aspiration of immigrant strivers. But she’s a musician as much as an advocate. Her songs mingle Pan-American rhythms with pop exuberance, deploy electronics amid live instruments, and stack her confident vocals into overpowering virtual choirs. She proclaims the joy of crossing borders.

‘BoJack Horseman’ Bids Farewell

I’m absolutely dreading the end of “BoJack Horseman” on Netflix because it’s one of my all-time favorite shows, and when it ends, I’ll be sad forever. But more of me is looking forward to it because “BoJack” is its most spectacular self when it is echoing, satirizing and re-imagining well-known TV formats. It’s done it for hokey family sitcoms, for cable news, for weird game shows, for bleak antihero dramas — and now for the prestige finale rollout. Series finales are successful when they feel like the natural, inevitable consequences for the characters’ behaviors, and despite its appetite for the wildly strange and imaginative, “BoJack Horseman” is never random. It has the best memory of any show since “The Shield” — every small story line works its way back somehow, even when the space between causes and effects can be years. Eight episodes, coming Jan. 31, will never be enough, but I can’t wait.

Greta Gerwig Takes on Chekhov

It’s been three years since we last got to see Greta Gerwig act, in Mike Mills’ “20th Century Women.” (We got to hear her, at least, in Wes Anderson’s 2018 stop-motion film “Isle of Dogs.”) Since then, she’s been busy writing and directing “Lady Bird” and “Little Women,” both of which star Saoirse Ronan as Gerwig’s muse and avatar. When I interviewed Gerwig in October, she told me that she wasn’t interested in directing herself as an actor — she loses herself too much in a role to also run a set — so fans of her performances and her films will always feel a little bereft. I’ll be happy to see her again soon, onstage in Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” acting opposite Oscar Isaac in a New York Theater Workshop production due in 2020.

Dance Performance Meets Protest

How can the voice and body be a site of resistance and transformation? That’s a key question behind “Utterances from the Chorus,” Danspace Project’s latest platform series. Beginning Feb. 22, Okwui Okpokwasili, a MacArthur recipient, and Judy Hussie-Taylor, Danspace’s executive director and chief curator, delve into ideas about performance and protest with programs featuring Algerian-French choreographer Nacera Belaza, Moroccan choreographer Meryem Jazouli and Bengali-American performer Samita Sinha. If contemporary dance holds a certain allure yet still seems intimidating, the platform series, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, is a way in. And, of course, you can count on the glittering presence of Okpokwasili, whose artistry will be visible throughout: Not only will she release an album and a collaborative book of songs and poems with writer Asiya Wadud, she offers a weekly performance installation with director, designer and filmmaker Peter Born, “Sitting On a Man’s Head.” With a rotating cast of 30, it is inspired by the act of Igbo women of Nigeria publicly shaming a man with dances and songs. Here, the artists aim for restoration.

Broadway Musicals, Revived

Two Broadway musical revivals have me (and the busy theater web) buzzing. “West Side Story,” opening on Feb. 20, is a classic that’s familiar enough to handle some aesthetic meddling, which is why I’m eager to see how Belgian avant-garde director Ivo van Hove cracks it open with video, violence and no preconceptions. “Caroline, or Change,” opening on April 7, is just the opposite: a not-yet-classic that deserves to be. As such, my hope is that the new production will be faithful enough to the 2003 original — about a black woman who works as a maid for a Jewish family in Louisiana in 1963 — to show everyone why.

Jack London on Film

“Martin Eden” is a somewhat autobiographical novel by Jack London, published in 1909 and less well known among American readers than London’s tales of adventure. The book is more popular in Europe, and it has inspired Italian filmmaker Pietro Marcello to cook up an adaptation that is both scrupulously faithful and wildly, almost insanely inventive. When I first saw the movie — with dialogue in Italian and décor that suggests a 20th-century run through a blender — I almost lost my mind. American literature and Italian cinema are two of my long-standing passions, but I never dreamed they would meet in such a frenzied, high-minded hookup. Kino Lorber is releasing it this spring.

Standup Gets Back to Basics

In 2012, Maria Bamford performed a stand-up special to an audience of two, her parents. Five years later, in her follow-up, she performed to an audience of one, her husband, before changing its stage and the audience several more times in a roving production. These shows were wonderfully innovative and hilarious, and it takes nothing away from them to conclude that I’m thrilled that her new special, “Weakness Is the Brand,” out on Jan. 28, gets back to basics, with her standing on a theater stage telling jokes. Bamford is one of the absolute masters of the craft, and while she has far too restless an imagination to stick to convention, just seeing her do stand-up (albeit with a little fourth-wall breaking, to be sure) is more than enough.

Dev Patel Plays David Copperfield

Sensibility is a crucial ingredient for turning books into movies. Why do it? Why are you doing it? We have to feel your feeling, especially when the book is about 170 years old. But something about Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” seems to want the irreverence of the man responsible for “In the Loop” and “Veep” and “The Death of Stalin.” Yes, Armando Iannucci is doing Dickens’ first truly great novel, and he’s made Dev Patel his David. The movie, called “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” is keeping things in the 19th century. So what will this satirist’s penchant for third-degree banter and sloshing social engagements locate in this giant book about maturing through misfortune? Will it address that Patel is of South Asian descent, that Davy’s benefactors and antagonists (Ben Whishaw is playing conniving Uriah Heep!) are white? Will it care? The real excitement is that Patel, who was also good as a duped assassin in last year’s “The Wedding Guest,” might get to do more in a movie than be a sidekick or symbol.

A Haunting Memory Play Returns

On a dank winter’s night in 1997, a block away from Union Square, I discovered my face was wet with tears I hadn’t even realized I had shed. I had just left a new play by Paula Vogel called “How I Learned to Drive” at the Vineyard Theater. And only as I started to walk home did the impact of its portrait of irreparably damaged lives fully register in my body. It was a memory play unlike any I had seen before, of delicate lyricism and awful truth, in which a grown woman recalls the young girl she was and the uncle who sexually abused her. Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse originated the roles of the girl and her uncle, and their gentle but harrowing performances have never entirely left my mind. Now, they are recreating those parts in the Broadway debut of this Pulitzer Prize winner in a Manhattan Theater Club production, which begins previews in March at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Mark Brokaw, the original director, returns as well. And a play that is partly about recapturing lost time — and the illumination, distortions and redemption that come with retrospect — seems guaranteed to achieve a whole new level of resonance.

Composers Celebrate the 19th Amendment

In February, the New York Philharmonic inaugurates Project 19, an ambitious, multiseason commissioning project of 19 female composers to celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment. As part of the festivities, the Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the 1947 American opera “The Mother of Us All” by composer Virgil Thomson and librettist Gertrude Stein. The “mother” in the title is Susan B. Anthony, and the opera tells her story, though in the context of a fantastical musical and literary pageant of 19th-century America, in which historical and fictional characters from disparate eras meet, greet and grapple with issues of women’s rights. This site-specific staged production will be presented in the museum’s American Wing, with singers from the Juilliard School and musicians from the Philharmonic. If you don’t know the piece, don’t miss it. If you do, you won’t.

More Latino Art, Please

I’m looking forward to — hoping for — a year in which Latino artists, specifically artists of Latin descent living in the United States and the Caribbean, get their due. Latino art continues to be all but ignored by major museums. It has, for example, virtually no presence in the recent MoMA rehang (which gives significant space to abstraction from South America, a market favorite). There have been flashes of attention. In 2017, “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA,” sponsored by the Getty Foundation, demonstrated the rich history of Chicano art on the West Coast. The 2019 Whitney Biennial included work by five artists, including Daniel Lind-Ramos, living and working in Puerto Rico. But what’s needed is sustained institutional follow-up, meaning commitment. I’ll be on the lookout for that in the year, and the decade, ahead.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/arts/critics-look-forward-2020.html" id="27eec6d1-46b0-37af-a359-7fcf8d7dab1a"> The New York Times </a> .

12 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2020

As a new year begins, our critics highlight the movies, music, TV, comedy and other art they anticipate before summer.

This year, a fresh crop of dancers revived and reinterpreted classics, and presenting organizations finally realized that tap has room at the top for more than one performer.

New Bodies Feed and Revive Old Works

The ephemeral nature of dance can cause a lot of anxiety: How to maintain the integrity of a live artwork over time? Do new performances measure up to the original? While the fear is that dances will diminish with age, sometimes they get better or just change in illuminating ways. In a few of this year’s most memorable moments, older works bristled with the fresh energy and ideas of new dancers and collaborators.

Martha Graham’s 1936 “Chronicle” is a staple of the Graham company’s repertoire. A stark response to the rise of fascism in Europe, it embodies an anti-war message that has remained resonant. But when Leslie Andrea Williams made her New York debut in the heroic central role in April, she imbued it with newfound authority, sincerity and drive. And as the first black woman to dance this part, she expanded the work’s meanings and the possibilities of who might see themselves reflected in her power.

It was also refreshing to see a more heterogeneous cast in the early works of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, who recently passed on her celebrated solo “Violin Phase,” a section of her 1982 “Fase,” to two women of color, Yuika Hashimoto and Soa Ratsifandrihana. (For most of its history, only De Keersmaeker, a white woman, danced the solo.) At New York Live Arts in September, Ratsifandrihana was especially riveting, navigating the work’s geometries with revelatory tenderness and concentration.

I didn’t see Yvonne Rainer’s long-dormant “Parts of Some Sextets” in 1965, so I can’t compare its vivid reconstruction, presented by Performa, with any previous iteration. But what she assembled with the dancer Emily Coates, who oversaw the reinvention of this dance for 11 people and 12 mattresses, deftly superimposed the present and past, while inviting us to contemplate the timeless themes embedded in a mattress: in Rainer’s words, “sex, death, illness, sleep and dreams.” It all was there.

A Breakout Year for Tap

This year, the great American art of tap dance enjoyed a sea change.

At the start of this century, it often appeared that in the eyes of presenters, only one tap dancer existed: Savion Glover. After the success of his 1996 Broadway show, “Bring In da Noise/Bring In da Funk,” his young genius was hard to ignore. Most of the few concert-dance slots allotted to tap went to him.

Then came Michelle Dorrance. After she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2013, she became the one. Rightly recognized as a charismatic performer and an imaginative choreographer, she was invited to just about every dance festival and even onto late-night TV. A little younger than Glover and inspired by him, she, in turn, immediately inspired and emboldened younger dancers, including Caleb Teicher.

Teicher, whose career is now taking off, might seem in line to take over. But Dorrance’s example has helped to change attitudes, and her penchant for spreading attention to others seems to be opening up more room. Both her company and Teicher’s appeared at City Center this year, separately, each delivering a performance that was crowd-pleasing in the best sense. More remarkably, dancers a bit older than Dorrance, 40, also got their day.

In September, Ayodele Casel, 44, led her first show at the Joyce Theater: a knockout joyfest. And just this past week, the hoofers Jason Samuels Smith, Derick K. Grant and Dormeshia, all veterans of “Bring in da Noise,” brought their extraordinary “And Still You Must Swing” to the same theater. When Dorrance returns there this month, it won’t just be a precedent-breaking number of tap acts in one season at a bellwether theater for the dance mainstream. It will be a sign that a truth long buried can finally be seen on New York stages: The top of tap is broader than any single dancer.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/arts/dance/08burke-seibert.html" id="64f73ac4-0e9f-39a4-a37f-836f17782a2e"> The New York Times </a> .

(Best of 2019: Dance)

Other Movements That Moved Us

The Dancer

Eric Parra, 23, member of the Limón Dance Company

On Saturday mornings during the summer, there is an open invitation from the Limón Dance Company to learn a modern technique typically reserved for dancers training in spacious mirrored rooms. The class is free and takes place in a grassy corner of Bryant Park. No registration is required, and anyone — from toddlers to retirees — can join.

“For all you know, you could be going out for a walk in Bryant Park and you end up taking a full body movement class,” said Eric Parra, who led last Saturday’s class.

He started with simple combinations to warm up the spine and legs, then transitioned into slightly more complicated movement sequences, all set to the rhythms of a live percussionist.

The class highlights core aspects of the Limón technique, which values movement that swings, releases and maintains a grounded connection to the floor.

“If you fall here, you’re going to fall on grass,” Parra said. “It feels safe. It feels fun. When you’re a kid, you love to play in the grass, so I think dancing in the grass lifts the spirit.”

The participants tend to be a mixture of locals and tourists making their way through the park. You could end up dancing with your neighbor, Parra said, or you could be dancing with someone who traveled from across the world. Often participants do not speak English, but luckily, the most important language here is movement.

“You don’t necessarily have to hear everything in order to understand what’s going on,” Parra said. “We try to cultivate a warm, welcoming space for everybody, where language isn’t a barrier to getting the most from this experience.” — JULIA JACOBS

When: Saturdays at 10 a.m. through Sept. 28 at Bryant Park; bryantpark.org.

The Frame Makers

Bill Schunk, 64, and Rose Schunk, 57, owners of Frames New York

The Schunks’ work has been seen by thousands of people — and yet it hasn’t, because, as they put it, their work is best if it vanishes. “The frame sort of needs to disappear,” Bill Schunk said. “If you’re noticing the frame, maybe something is wrong.”

The husband-wife team has quietly been supporting the art world since the late 1980s, giving prints, photographs and paintings a border, an edge.

Bill Schunk works with individual artists who flutter in and out of their studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and Rose Schunk works with galleries and corporations in New York and across the world, including the new Pace/MacGill Gallery. (She is currently working on its upcoming Peter Hujar exhibition.)

Each frame is created at their studio from locally sourced materials, like wood and glass. They finish it off with stains or layers of lacquer and, finally, they decide on a type of glazing.

Over the years, the couple has worked with the Irving Penn Foundation, Hudson Yards and artists like Chuck Close, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ed Ruscha. “It’s like we have our own private show with each piece that comes in,” Rose Schunk said.

They agreed that seeing artists progress and develop is the best part. It’s “like watching them all grow up,” Bill Schunk said. — ALISHA HARIDASANI GUPTA

When: “Peter Hujar: Master Class” opens Sept. 14 at Pace/MacGill Gallery, 540 W. 25th St., Manhattan; pacemacgill.com.

The Projectionist

Evelyn Emile, 32, film projectionist at Anthology Film Archives

For Evelyn Emile, a projectionist who has been working at Anthology Film Archives for more than three years, films aren’t just seen and heard; they are also something you touch.

“I love handling film,” she said. “I have some contact with reality when I’m projecting film that I don’t have when I’m doing something digital.”

Working with film prints, she explained, requires precision and constant attention: “If I move the focus knob a millimeter, I know it will come into focus. Small movements can make a big difference on the screen.” And that’s what’s rewarding about it, she added. It’s up to her to ensure that the sometimes fragile reels of film show up on-screen in the way they were intended.

This isn’t accomplished by simply pressing a button. Film prints have to be inspected and occasionally repaired, cue marks have to be added, and lenses, aperture plates and sound formats must be set properly. All that extra effort, she says, is worth it. “Working at a theater that continues to program and screen films in their original format is very important to me. I think that when the film gets digitally transferred, it does lose a little bit of its soul.”

Film projection, she said, keeps her grounded. “Everything that I do in the booth, especially with film, has a consequence for how the film is shown. If I make small movements with framing adjustments, it affects how people see the film.”

The tactile relationship that Emile has with the films she projects has only deepened her love of cinema. Emile is particularly excited to screen films by Carl Dreyer, including “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) and “Ordet” (1955), over Labor Day weekend. “Each of his films is really extraordinary,” she said. “They have simple plots showing everyday people, not judging them, just showing their relationships and how they work through the problems of their lives.” — PETER LIBBEY

When: Carl Dreyer’s films will be shown through Sept. 3 at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave., Manhattan; 212-505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org.

The Manager

Larry Siegel, 44, general manager of SummerStage in Central Park

Larry Siegel wears many hats at a venue that, this summer, has hosted performances by British singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae, indie-rock act Japanese Breakfast, singers from the Metropolitan Opera and others. Even Taylor Swift stopped by, for a live performance broadcast on “Good Morning America.”

This is what a typical day looks like for Siegel, before and during a show.

“I get in between 7 and 8 a.m., and that’s when we have our first production meeting. After that the band starts coming in. We make sure our hospitality teams are setting up coffee and tea and opening the dressing rooms. I make sure our delivery of portable toilets are coming in, that our turf is clean, and all the leaves and debris from last evening have been blown off.

“Then I check in with the union workers over at the stage. I meet with our production manager, then the front-of-house manager. That’s all in the morning. Then our security deployment arrives and we check them all in, make sure they’re all up-to-date with any threats or anything that we receive from the NYPD or Homeland Security.”

This is the time in the day, Siegel said, when they get ready to open the doors to thousands of concertgoers. Then things get frantic.

“There’s a lot of running around. My radio is going off constantly. There was a medical situation last night, so I dealt with that. We tend to have a lot of fainting at shows. Taylor Swift, especially. We had her last week. That was a lot of little girls fainting.

“The best part of my job is knowing that people are coming to us to enjoy their lives, to take a few hours out of their grind. Once a show is up and running and the band is performing and there are smiles on the people’s faces as you’re looking out across them — that, to me, is worth every piece of sweat.” — AS TOLD TO GABE COHN

When: SummerStage continues through Oct. 5 at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park; cityparksfoundation.org.

The Bingo Host

Linda Simpson, host of “Linda Loves Bingo” at Le Poisson Rouge and other locations

“I started hosting bingo in the late 1990s. And ‘Linda Loves Bingo’ as an entity started about 10 years ago at Le Poisson Rouge. That’s where my main residency has been and, yes, I have been there that long.

“What I’ve created, I hope, is a real escapist environment. It’s a no-political zone, which I find kind of important these days, and it’s just a great chance for people of all kinds — it’s a very mixed crowd — to enjoy themselves.”

“The challenges include always shopping for prizes because I offer discount-store delights, which means I scour the stores of New York City for fun stuff. I actually enjoy it, but it’s a lot of schlepping — it’s time-consuming. I do have a great crew that works with me — I have DJs and drag queens and burlesque girls that work as the Vanna Whites. I will say, even to this day, there’s a little preshow jitters, but I think that’s good.

“Some of the players, I’m genuine friends with them now. And it’s been really good affirmation for me. I always wanted to make a living doing drag, and bingo has just allowed me to live as a drag queen.” — AS TOLD TO ALISHA HARIDASANI GUPTA

When: Saturdays at 7.30 p.m. at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., Manhattan; lindalovesbingo.com.

The Theater Guide

Ricky Jones, 35, TKTS patron services supervisor

Times Square isn’t a setting normally associated with well-informed conversation, but Ricky Jones says that’s what you’ll get if you come to the TKTS booth at 47th Street and Broadway to buy discounted theater tickets. “One of the big things about us,” he said, “is that you can really have a discussion with people about theater, which I think is really special.”

Part of his job, he explained, is to circulate among the customers waiting in line to go over the shows that have tickets available and that might be of most interest to them. For visitors not on top of the New York theater scene, these exchanges can reduce the stress of choosing among unfamiliar offerings. “When a lot of people come to New York City for the first time, they might know about ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘Chicago’ and maybe ‘Wicked,’ but they probably don’t know about all the other shows on the board,” Jones said.

Instead of offering their opinions on shows, Jones and his team try to find the right play, musical or dance performance for each customer. “I usually ask what kind of show they are looking for, if they’ve seen a Broadway show before, and then I try to pair what they’ve seen before with what they’re looking for.”

For theater experts, these conversations can go deeper. “We can talk about the show you saw or want to see and geek out about it,” Jones said. He speaks from experience, having first come to TKTS as a theater-obsessed kid: “We would come to New York every year for Thanksgiving, and I remember there was a promoter, a British guy with purple hair. While my Mom waited in line, I would just talk theater with this guy, to the point that he has watched me grow up since I was about 8 years old.” — PETER LIBBEY

When: Daily at the Times Square booth, as well as the TKTS outlets at Lincoln Center and South Street Seaport.

This article originally appeared in

This Labor Day, We Salute the (Arts) Workers

NEW YORK — Before you start loading up your fall culture calendar, take a moment this Labor Day Weekend to reflect on those people who make sure that the city’s cultural events — concerts, Broadway shows and art exhibitions — go off without a hitch. In a culture center like New York, that means there are thousands of people to thank; here, we introduce you to several of them. These are edited excerpts from conversations. — Nicole Herrington, Weekend Ar...

Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.

Miranda Lambert, ‘It All Comes Out in the Wash’ and ‘Locomotive’

A pair of new songs from Miranda Lambert — her first new solo material since 2016 — show off the parts of her arsenal that have been absorbed by others and those that remain indelibly hers. Musically, “It All Comes Out in the Wash,” is genial verging on folksy. Lambert applies her curlicue twang while describing a variety of mishaps, some small and some just the other side of decent — dating a bridesmaid’s ex and bringing him to the wedding nonetheless, a dalliance with the boss. These are the small-town foibles that Kacey Musgraves has made her stock in trade. In a Nashville that has largely forsworn emotional complexity in favor of clunky earnestness, it stands out, but is not Lambert’s turf alone. “Locomotive,” however, captures something far more ineffable. Her voice is less melodic, more jagged at the rim, while the music is far rowdier, suggesting a bar band scrambling to finish up before closing time. And Lambert, unlike any of her peers, is just as elegant in this chaos — causing this chaos — as when she’s holding back.

— JON CARAMANICA

Sam Smith, ‘How Do You Sleep?’

In his earliest songs, Sam Smith was an oversinger, often a beautiful one. His voice was tightly controlled, full of a sinewy power, and when he allowed, lined with cracks of feeling. As he’s become more famous, though, his music has been streamlined, doing some of the heavy lifting. His new single “How Do You Sleep?” is breathable, deliberately paced, almost soothing, even if what he’s singing about is the sharp cut of betrayal. After using his voice to unleash anguish for years, Smith sounds untroubled now — maybe it’s restraint, maybe it’s fatigue.

Residente, iLe and Bad Bunny, ‘Afilando Los Cuchillos’

“Afilando Los Cuchillos” — “Sharpening the Knives” — was rush-released to amplify this week’s demonstrations demanding the resignation of the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo A. Roselló. It’s no surprise to hear political rage from Calle 13’s Residente, joined by his sister iLe singing a forthright chorus. But there’s also an equally furious rapped diatribe denouncing the governor — for incompetence, lies and corruption — from the Puerto Rican pop phenomenon Bad Bunny, who until now has presented himself as a lover, not a protester.

— JON PARELES

Ranky Tanky, ‘Good Time’

Hand-clapping, tambourine-shaking and call-and-response syncopations that reach back to West Africa via South Carolina’s Gullah culture drive “Good Time,” from the Charleston, South Carolina, band Ranky Tanky. The band aligns a jazz rhythm section with Gullah roots, and the momentum keeps building in this seven-minute track and its euphoric rent-party video — especially around the five-minute mark, when the soul shouter Quiana Parler takes over the vocals and carries the song toward primal jubilation.

Seratones, ‘Power’

A fast, urgent neo-1960s soul beat propels “Power,” a song about determination even against steep odds. “Brighter days coming but I can’t see where I’m going/In the dark morning I hit the ground running,” A.J. Haynes sings. “We take each step to lift us up higher.” Around her, minor chords and shivering, sliding strings suggest the high stakes and serious obstacles, but gospel voices join in to push ahead.

Wilco, ‘Love Is Everywhere (Beware)’

The chorus declares, “Right now, right now, love is everywhere,” but Jeff Tweedy’s hoarse whisper and the way the melody descends make clear that he’s not really so sure. There’s more self-doubt and ambivalence in the verses: “So many things I do, I can’t explain to you,” he notes. The song starts as a reassuring waltz, strummed on acoustic guitar, soon adding perpetual-motion lead-guitar triplets that are prettily ornamental, but nervous, too. “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)” is the first song from a Wilco album due in October: “Ode to Joy.”

Lafayette Gilchrist, ‘For the Go Go’

New Orleans barrelhouse piano, the impressionism of Ravel and Duke Ellington’s jaggy solo-piano sound form the bedrock of Lafayette Gilchrist’s style at the keyboard. But if there’s one big influence on the way he thinks about rhythm, it’s the deeply swinging “pocket” of a classic go-go beat. With its classic loping groove, built on heavy hand percussion and call-and-response flow, go-go is the unofficial musical idiom of Gilchrist’s native Washington. On “Dark Matter,” his newest release, Gilchrist is alone at the acoustic piano, playing his own roiling compositions. It’s a far cry from the setup of a go-go band, but the hypnosis of the pocket comes through.

— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Prettymuch featuring Lil Tjay, ‘Lying’

On “Lying,” Prettymuch makes sweaty pop that lands somewhere between trap and new wave. It remains the most intriguing young American boy band, facile with pinpoint harmonies and consistently rich singing. “Lying” is full of vivid details, too, from a new California king bed bought in anguish to a phone call that was never meant to connect: “If it sound like my voice is shaking/it’s cause I’m way up in the hills, my signal’s breaking.”

Oumar Konate, ‘Koima Djine’

Oumar Konate, from Mali, was the lead guitarist for Khaira Arby (1959-2018), a galvanizing Malian songwriter who spearheaded a band that brought a broad streak of San Francisco psychedelia to Malian rock. It turns out that Konate can sing, too — and whoop and ululate — as he proves on “I Love You Inna,” his album released Friday. “Koima Djine” is a plea for rain from local deities (or, per the song title, genies); it rides a tumultuous, constantly morphing six-beat Malian rhythm with raw vocal incantations and plenty of wah-wah.

avery r. young, ‘Lead in De Wattah [a Re-visit(id) Negro Spiritual] fo(r) Flint’

On “Tubman.,” his latest album, avery r. young comes on like a preacher from the Afrofuture. Moving between peroration, poetry and explosive singing — whether he’s backed by a thumping house beat or by a small choir — this Chicago-based poet and vocalist seems most focused on stirring the congregation to action. On “Lead in de Wattah,” he turns a familiar black spiritual into an airing of grievances today, condemning the powers responsible for the Flint water crisis. His voice starts quivery and delicate, reminiscent of Aaron Neville’s, but it turns gritty and growling as he leads the choir in an outraged refrain: “Charlie playing god with the water.”

Iggy Pop, ‘Free’

Iggy Pop’s “Free” is brief, atmospheric and elusive. Amid sustained electronic tones from guitarist Noveller and ghostly overdubbed Miles Davis-tinged trumpet lines from Leron Thomas, Pop’s voice appears only a few times, intoning, “I wanna be free.” As the title song and opening track of an album due in September, it could lead anywhere.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/music/playlist-sam-smith-prettymuch-wilco.html" id="9b622da1-ccbe-3968-a0ad-0810d3830074">The New York Times</a>.

(Playlist)

Miranda Lambert Stomps Back, and 11 More New Songs

Augusta Savage

(New-York Historical Society, through July 28; 212-873-3400; nyhistory.org.)

The fine arts season may be winding down, but that doesn’t mean the art-going options are drying up. After fanning out across the city, the art critics for The New York Times have 10 first-rate museum exhibitions to recommend, including “Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman” at the New-York Historical Society and “T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America” at the National Museum of the American Indian. Many of these shows are closing soon, so don’t let them pass you by.

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