As the historic presidency of Barack Obama comes to an end, our country is reminded that the African-American story continues to be written today.

Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) has a vocation within a vocation.

“A world without color would seem dead,” she said in a 1972 interview. “Color, for me, is life.”

“Everything I have done since,” the artist later said, “has been based on that eggbeater idea.”

An exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago brings the text and the photographs for “Harlem Is Nowhere” together for the first time since 1948.

Alexander the Great created a new world of encounter and multiplicity.