Dawoud Bey Exhibition Explores Black History and Diasporic Memory at AGO
Written by Cat Radio UK on June 12, 2026
Dawoud Bey Exhibition Explores Black History and Memory
TORONTO, ON — The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) will welcome acclaimed American photographer and filmmaker Dawoud Bey back to Toronto this summer with a powerful exhibition exploring Black history, memory, migration, and the enduring relationship between landscape and the African diaspora.
Opening July 24, 2026, Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes is presented in partnership with the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art and will bring together 23 photographs, a two-channel film installation, and selected works from the AGO’s African art collection.
Curated by Allison Glenn, Curator of the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, the exhibition will be installed in the Murray Frum Gallery at the AGO and remain on view through Spring 2027.
Exploring the Black Past Through Landscape
For more than five decades, Dawoud Bey has used photography to examine Black life, history, and identity in North America.
Born in Queens, New York, in 1953, Bey came of age during the Civil Rights Movement and has built an internationally recognized career creating work that encourages audiences to consider how the past continues to shape the present.
“How can one reimagine and visualize African American history and make that history resonate in the contemporary moment?” Bey asks through his artistic practice.
The exhibition focuses on landscapes connected to the history of enslavement, migration, resistance, and survival, inviting visitors to consider the experiences of Black communities across generations.
Connecting Toronto to the Underground Railroad
Greeting visitors at the entrance of the exhibition will be a large-scale reproduction of Untitled #25 (Lake Erie and the Sky) from Bey’s celebrated series Night Coming Tenderly, Black.
The series reimagines the landscapes of Ohio as they may have appeared to enslaved people escaping bondage along the Underground Railroad under the cover of darkness.
The image’s proximity to African sculptures from the AGO collection creates a visual dialogue between West Africa, the transatlantic slave trade, and North America.
For Toronto audiences, the work carries particular significance. Toronto served as a destination for many freedom seekers escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad during the nineteenth century.
Historical Memory Through Photography
The exhibition also includes works from Bey’s acclaimed photographic series In This Here Place and Stony the Road.
The photographs document landscapes connected to the history of enslavement in the United States and locations where Black people were forcibly moved throughout history.
Large black-and-white gelatin silver prints depict dense forests, bayous, tangled branches, and rural environments that carry the weight of historical memory.
Curator Allison Glenn said the exhibition highlights the enduring connections between North America and Africa while encouraging reflection on the legacy of the Middle Passage.
“What Dawoud Bey’s monumental photographs enable us to do is visually represent the enduring dialogues between North America and Africa and consider the importance of global waterways to those dialogues,” Glenn said.
Immersive Film Installation
At the centre of the exhibition is 350,000 (2023), a two-channel video installation on loan from the Rennie Collection.
The work reimagines the experiences of approximately 350,000 enslaved Africans who travelled along the Richmond Slave Trail in Virginia between 1830 and 1860.
Filmed by cinematographer Bron Moyi, the installation places viewers within dense vegetation and natural landscapes while a soundtrack of breathing and body percussion heightens the emotional experience.
The soundscape was created in collaboration with choreographer and Virginia Commonwealth University professor E. Gaynell Sherrod.
A Career Dedicated to Black History
Dawoud Bey is widely recognized as one of the most influential contemporary photographers working today.
A MacArthur Fellow, educator, and Professor Emeritus at Columbia College Chicago, Bey first gained international recognition with his Harlem, U.S.A. series in the 1970s.
His work has since been exhibited in major museums throughout North America and Europe and is held in numerous public collections.
Recent exhibitions include Street Portraits at the Denver Art Museum and Dawoud Bey: An American Project, organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Exhibition Opens July 24
AGO Members will receive early access to the exhibition beginning July 24, 2026. Annual Passholders and the general public can visit starting July 28.
Admission remains free for Ontarians under 25, Indigenous Peoples, AGO Members, and Annual Passholders.
As Toronto prepares to host the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes offers visitors an opportunity to engage with powerful visual narratives exploring Black history, displacement, resilience, and the ongoing connections between Africa and the Americas.
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