South of Glades Road, between Dixie and Federal highways, lies Pearl City, the historic treasure of Boca Raton. African American blue-collar workers settled the neighborhood in 1915, making it the city’s oldest community. To celebrate this jewel, acclaimed Washington, D.C.–based photographer and activist Reginald Cunningham set out to photograph the descendants of these settlers, along with the district’s current residents, and capture their oral histories.
Explore the gems of the photographer’s mission in “Reginald Cunningham: Black Pearls” at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, just half a mile away from Pearl City. In “Black Pearls,” curated by Kelli Bodle, more than a dozen large-scale portrait photographs reveal the subjects’ magnetism, accompanied by audio recordings and family mementos passed down through the generations.
The exhibition, on view in the Focus Gallery from September 3 to January 22, will be unveiled at an opening reception at the museum September 2. Tickets are $25.
Facebook Comments