Forty-six years ago, a young photographer named Marilyn Nance got the opportunity of a lifetime. A student at the Pratt Institute, an art school in Brooklyn, Nance had never left the country. But she became one of the official photographers documenting a festival in Lagos, Nigeria, called FESTAC ’77. The monthlong festival featured artists from across Africa and the diaspora, and has been described as the most important Black cultural event of the twentieth century. But, on returning from the festival, Nance didn’t find any takers to publish her photos, and fifty years later, few people know it took place. “I thought I would be talking about FESTAC in 1978, not in 2022,” Nance told the staff writer Julian Lucas. “If some tragic thing had happened, everybody would remember. . . . But I guess maybe there was no investment in celebrating Black joy.” A collection of Nance’s photographs from the event was published late in 2022, in the book “Last Day in Lagos.”
Miranda July’s New Novel Takes on Marriage, Desire, and Perimenopause
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Isn’t Going Away
How a Tech Executive Lobbied Lawmakers for the TikTok Ban
Wired’s Katie Drummond: The TikTok Ban Is “Rooted in Hypocrisy”; Plus, Hannah Goldfield on Culinary TikTok
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Could Swing the Election. Who Should Be More Worried—Biden or Trump?
Israel, Gaza, and the Turmoil at One American University
Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, Who Refused to “Find” Votes for Donald Trump, Prepares for Another Election
Jerry Seinfeld on Making a Life in Comedy (and Also, Pop-Tarts)
Judi Dench on Bond and Shakespeare
Jonathan Haidt on the Plague of Anxiety Affecting Young People
Maya Hawke on the Fear of “Missing Out,” and Jen Silverman on “There’s Going to Be Trouble”
How a Republican and a Democrat Carved out Exemptions to Texas’s Abortion Ban
The Film Critic Justin Chang on What to See in 2024
The Attack on Black History, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jelani Cobb
Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, on Cultivating the Black Roots of Country Music
Alicia Keys Returns to Her Roots with Her New Musical, “Hell’s Kitchen”
Percival Everett and the Reinvention of Mark Twain’s Jim
Trump’s Authoritarian Pronouncements Recall a Dark History
March Madness 2024: College Basketball at a Crossroads
Judith Butler Can’t “Take Credit or Blame” for Gender Furor
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
On with Kara Swisher
Fresh Air
Should This Exist?
Without Fail
Hannibal Buress