Join MoAD, SFMOMA and Roadside Attractions for a Bay Area special advanced screening & discussion of Titus Kaphar's new feature film Exhibiting Forgiveness. The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker and artist Titus Kaphar and MoAD's Chief of Curatorial & Public Programs Key Jo Lee, moderated by MoAD's Cultural Critic-in-Residence Dr. Artel Great.  

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About the film

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Exhibiting Forgiveness follows Tarrell (André Holland), an admired American painter who lives with his wife, singer Aisha (Andra Day), and their young son, Jermaine. Tarrell’s artwork excavates beauty from the anguish of his youth, keeping past wounds at bay. His path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile. Tarrell’s mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) a pious woman with a profound and joyful spirituality, hopes that Tarrell can open his heart to forgiveness, giving them all another chance at being a family. Tarrell and La’Ron learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving in this raw and deeply moving film. Exhibiting Forgiveness opens exclusively in theaters nationwide October 18th.

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About the speakers

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Titus Kaphar (@tituskaphar_english_15) was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. He awakened a lifelong interest in art history while attending junior college, taking a course that alerted him to his affinity for visual learning. He earned a BFA in studio art at San José State University, California, in 2001, and an MFA at Yale University in 2006. Kaphar’s paintings are multilayered, sometimes sculptural, through his manipulations: slashes, erasures, and swipes of paint aim to reflect the ways in which certain histories are obscured, lost, or waiting to be revealed. In a 2017 TED Talk he expounded the impact of art-making on amending the art-historical canon by demonstrating his practice in real time, applying broad paint strokes of white onto one of his canvases to create a new work, which now lives in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection.

Kaphar founded the film production company Revolution Ready as an extension of his art practice in 2021, and his feature film Exhibiting Forgiveness premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival; Exhibiting Forgiveness has since been acquired by Roadside Attractions, and will receive an international theatrical release, beginning in October of 2024. Other works are held by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Detroit Institute of Arts; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Kaphar, also a recipient of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship, lives and works in New Haven, where he co-founded the arts incubator NXTHVN.

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Key Jo Lee (@keyjolee) is chief of curatorial affairs and public programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. In this role, Lee oversees the strategic direction for the museum’s exhibitions and programs; leads globally on identifying and promoting emerging artists from the African diaspora; and works to expand MoAD’s reach and influence locally, nationally, and internationally. She is responsible for the overall management and execution of the museum’s curatorial vision, including its exhibitions, publications, and public and educational programs, and plays an important role in the organization’s outreach, communications, and digital strategy. Lee has a master’s degree from and is PhD candidate in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Her first book, Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, was published by Yale University Press and The Cleveland Museum of Art in January 2023.

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Dr. Artel Great (@dr.artelgreat) is the inaugural Cultural Critic-in-Residence at MoAD and the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African-American Cinema Studies and Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at San Francisco State University. He is also an Independent Spirit Award-nominated filmmaker and film and media scholar who has written on Black cinema and popular culture in both mainstream and academic publications.

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This program is presented in conjunction with Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week.

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