New James Baldwin Art Exhibit Emphasizes His Love For Community

In December 1973, acclaimed writer and future Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison wrote a letter to her longtime friend James Baldwin.

Working as a senior editor with the book publisher Random House at the time, she wrote to the famed essayist to thank him for giving her a quote in support of her newly released novel “Sula” and to apologize for the book publisher’s decision not to purchase Baldwin’s novel, “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

“I can’t tell you how I love you for having written it,” Morrison wrote, stating that she would have loved nothing more than to become a “Beale Street” groupie in promoting it. Readers can feel the adoration and fondness the author held for Baldwin in the letter, which is now on display in the nation’s capital alongside a host of other works honoring Baldwin, his life and his community.

“This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance,” a new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., named after the queer writer’s short story , opened to the public last week to coincide with his 100th birthday in August.

Inside the exhibit, visitors can take in an eclectic set — from correspondence between Baldwin and his contemporaries to portraits, photographs, literature, video projections and more.

Rhea L. Combs, the National Portrait Gallery’s director of curatorial affairs, wants visitors to the exhibit to view Baldwin not solely as a seminal figure but as someone who was also greatly influenced by the voices he surrounded himself with — voices that, for years, went unrecognized.

“Oftentimes portraiture is representational of an individual. Baked into that is sort of a hierarchy in terms of who gets their image on the wall,” said Combs,