The American Federation of Arts (AFA) has announced national tour dates for Willie Birch: Stories to Tell, chronicling the groundbreaking artist’s singular vision of the Black American experience.Spanning six decades of the acclaimed artist’s enduring body of work, rooted in the Black community’s joys, struggles, and everyday lives, the exhibition kicks off on May 5, 2026 at the California African American Museum before going on a national tour.
The exhibition is co-organized with the New Orleans Museum of Art, and features six decades of work (from the late 1960s to the present) representing Birch’s first career retrospective of this size and scope. The first leg of the national tour opens at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles on May 5. Willie Birch is a New Orleans–based artist, cultural provocateur, and community organizer who has devoted his artmaking career to storytelling.
Content dictates process. I care about the story. The process I use for the work comes after I have a story to tell.”
Willie Birch
Birch’s incisive art features a wide variety of media including paintings, large-scale drawings, wood and papier-mâché sculpture, and public art commissions. He draws on sources as diverse as jazz music, Egyptian numerology, and American folk art.
Willie Birch’s work does not shy away from the complexities of race, poverty, and systemic inequity, nor does it romanticize struggle. Instead, his art holds space for contradiction — pain and joy, vulnerability and pride, endurance and resistance. Whether exploring the quiet dignity of his neighbors or the complex history of African traditions in American culture, Birch’s eye is unwavering and empathetic. He speaks to us from the corner of the block, from the front porch, from within the beat of the brass band and the shade of the live oak. Birch has created a body of work rooted in the everyday lives, struggles, and joys of the Black community.”
Pauline Forlenza, Director and CEO of the AFA
Russell Lord (Chief of Curatorial Affairs at the Norman Rockwell Museum and a former curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art) will guest curate the exhibition, working in tandem with Amanda Hajjar, the AFA’s Assistant Curator and project manager for the Willie Birch exhibition. Founded in 1909 with the goal of sharing art with people across the United States, the AFA continues to reaffirm its mission with monographic exhibitions on important artists of our time.
Birch was born in 1942 in New Orleans, and trained in Europe, Baltimore, and New York. His artmaking was further influenced by his experiences in the New York art scene of the 1980s and 90s. Birch often speaks about “retentions,” a term he uses to describe cultural evidence of another culture’s traditions in Black American life. Throughout his career, Birch has explored how African traditions have been retained in music, art, and culture in America and beyond. The artist questions why certain things are retained and not others, unearthing uncomfortable truths about American identity, but also offering possibilities for greater cultural awareness.
Willie Birch’s work does not shy away from the complexities of race, poverty, and systemic inequity, nor does it romanticize struggle.”
Pauline Forlenza,Director and CEO of the AFA
In keeping with this tradition of publishing catalogues with important scholarly research, the exhibition is accompanied by a 208-page hardcover book published by the AFA in association with Yale University Press ‒ available for purchase in June 2026. The book is edited by Russell Lord. Essays about the exhibition and about Birch’s art are written by Russell Lord, Grace Deveney, Leslie King Hammond, and Lowery Stokes Sims, and explore the impact and legacy of Birch’s artmaking.
The exhibition has been booked by museums in four cities, including: California African American Museum in Los Angeles (May 5, 2026 – October 21, 2026), New Orleans Museum of Art (March 20, 2027 – September 5, 2027) Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville (October 28, 2027 – May 14, 2028) and Hudson River Museum, New York (September 22, 2028 – January 14, 2029)
