Fall at The Lewis Museum - Reading The Culture: Celebrating Our Stories In All Their Forms

For us, life is not as grim, but what reading does give us, I think, is just as powerful. When we open ourselves up to the ideas of other people, humble ourselves enough to learn from them, we can begin to see the world in new ways. – Frederick Douglass

This fall, programming at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum will center around the theme, Reading The Culture. We mean “reading” not only as in traditional forms of literacy, but also in the multiple ways that Black traditions invoke the idea of reading – from looking closely at images and text, to offering critiques in the barbershop or via Black Twitter, to engaging enthusiastically with ideas, to the ways that Black gay culture has taken up the notion of a “read” to mean telling a truth that shames the devil.

This year, in light of conflicts surrounding banned books, the Lewis Museum will celebrate books by some of the most frequently banned Black authors and authors of color. The guiding principle and goal of our Reading The Culture programs is to foster a space of learning, investigation, curiosity, imagination and deep reflection grounded in a love of reading.