MOCA presents a 35-year retrospective of painter Kerry James Marshall, co-organized by the MCA Chicago, MOCA, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art under the leadership of MOCAβs Chief Curator Helen Molesworth. Marshallβs figurative paintings have been joyful in their consistent portrayal of African Americans. The now nearly 600 year history of painting contains remarkably few African American painters and even fewer representations of black people. Marshall, a child of the civil rights era, set out to redress this absence. βYou canβt be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters,β Marshall has said, βand not feel like youβve got some kind of social responsibility. You canβt move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to goβ¦β Kerry James Marshall "Mastry" will be on view from March 12 to July 3, 2017 at MoCA in Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper