National Museum of African American History and Culture 2027 Wall Calendar

For over a hundred years, Black Americans dreamed of a place on the National Mall that would tell their story in full. In September 2016, that dream opened its doors as the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and its collection has grown to over 40,000 objects spanning art, music, faith, family, civil rights, slavery, and segregation. The National Museum of African American History and Culture 2027 Wall Calendar gathers twelve works from that collection into a single year, from Henry Ossawa Tanner and Charles White to Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, and the quilters of Gee's Bend. It is officially licensed by the museum, so each purchase helps support the museum and its mission to preserve this history.

The cover features a lithograph by Colombian artist Ana Mercedes Hoyos: a group of girls in sunny yellow and sky blue dresses, seen from behind, their braids and buns neatly done. Inside, each month pairs a full-page reproduction with a caption naming the artist, title, date, and medium, along with a short note on the work.

The Twelve Works Inside

January: Advancing Impulses (1997), Mildred Thompson (1936 to 2003). A radiant oil on vinyl, over four feet square, alive with looping red lines and bursts of yellow, lavender, and blue. Thompson moved from realist, socially engaged art to abstraction shaped by her love of physics and astronomy, and she painted this work after settling in Atlanta.

February: Ship in a Storm (1879), Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 to 1937). A small, dramatic early painting of a tall ship fighting a dark sea, made for family friend Bishop Daniel A. Payne of the AME Church, who worked closely with Tanner's father, Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner. Tanner grew up in Philadelphia and went on to international acclaim in France for his biblical paintings.

March: What did I see to be except myself? (2023), Kennedy Yanko (born 1988). A sculpture from her series She is a Verb that looks like draped fabric but is made of poured paint, peeled and shaped by hand, with copper salvaged from the original roof of the New York building that once housed the National Academy of Design. Yanko is known for fusing these "paint skins" with found metal.

April: Let's Walk Together (1953), Charles White (1918 to 1979). A powerful lithograph of men and women standing shoulder to shoulder, one of six prints from a 1953 portfolio. White devoted his career to portraying the humanity and dignity of everyday African Americans.

May: Mama Can Sing (2004), Faith Ringgold (1930 to 2024). A joyful color lithograph of a singer in full voice, companion to Ringgold's Papa Can Blow. Both prints grew out of her story quilt series devoted to the African American jazz scene, the narrative painted fabric works that made her one of the most celebrated artists of her generation.

June: I tàn bae pa procescciòn de San Basilio 1 (2005), Ana Mercedes Hoyos (1942 to 2014). The work featured on the cover: girls in bright party dresses gather for a procession in San Basilio de Palenque, the first free African town in the Americas, founded near Cartagena, Colombia, by people who escaped slavery after a 16th-century revolt. Hoyos devoted much of her career to celebrating the customs of this Afro-Colombian community.

July: Freedom T-shirt (2023), Jammie Holmes (born 1984). A 7 1/2-foot-square painting in acrylic and glitter honoring the legacy of the 1963 March on Washington. It references Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Fred Hampton, framed by a border of flags that includes the Pan-African flag and a nod to David Hammons's African-American Flag.

August: Château d'Olhain (1947), Loïs Mailou Jones (1905 to 1998). A sunlit view of a 15th-century French castle near Calais, painted on her second visit to France. Jones taught in Howard University's art department for 47 years and, like many American artists before her, found in Paris a place where she was accepted as an artist regardless of race.

September: Untitled (1993), Richard Mayhew (1924 to 2024). A watercolor landscape where a fiery red tree rises from fields of green and gold. Mayhew was known for abstracted landscapes built from light, color, and feeling, and he was a member of Spiral, the 1960s collective of Black artists that included Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff.

October: Negro es Bello II (1969, printed 2001), Elizabeth Catlett (1915 to 2012). Two stylized Black faces surrounded by circular emblems bearing a black panther. The title translates to "Black Is Beautiful," and Catlett's prints and sculptures celebrated Black life, beauty, and the fight for social justice.

November: View of Lake Okanagan, British Columbia (1882), Grafton Tyler Brown (1841 to 1918). A sweeping panorama of mountains and water in western Canada. A painter, lithographer, and mapmaker based in San Francisco, Brown is known as the first African American artist to paint the landscapes of California and the Pacific Northwest.

December: Sharecropper's Masterpiece (2008), Avis Collins Robinson (1954 to 2023) with Mensie Lee Pettway (born 1939) and Andrea Pettway Williams (born 1973). A striking quilt of corduroy, velvet, and cotton in stripes of red, pink, and cream, made in partnership with two quilters from Gee's Bend, Alabama. Robinson called her work "poetry made out of fabric," and the title speaks to the relationship between financial need and beautiful artistry.

Generous Space for Planning the Year

Each month features a roomy Sunday-start grid for appointments and reminders, with major holidays and moon phases marked and small views of the previous and next months for planning ahead. It hangs at 12 x 24 inches open and is printed on FSC-certified paper.

About the National Museum of African American History and Culture

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the Smithsonian Institution's museum dedicated exclusively to documenting African American life, history, and culture. The push for such a museum began in 1915 with African American Civil War veterans, and after decades of effort, Congress established it in 2003. It opened on the National Mall on September 24, 2016, in a dedication ceremony led by President Barack Obama, as the Smithsonian's nineteenth museum. Its collection now holds over 40,000 objects, from the personal belongings of Harriet Tubman to fine art by celebrated Black painters, sculptors, and quilters, and it has welcomed millions of visitors in person and online.

A Gift for History Lovers and Art Collectors

It makes a meaningful gift for the history buff who has already visited the museum twice, the friend still planning that trip to Washington, D.C., the Howard alum who will smile at Loïs Mailou Jones in August, the teacher building a Black history classroom, or the collector who loves seeing great art every day. It is a year-round celebration of the African American story told through the artists who shaped it.