The artworks on view in this exhibition offer multiple points of entry into the ways that artists explore complex ideas about the social, economic, political, and aesthetic roles of art in African and African American contexts. Conversations Considered: The artworks on view offer multiple points of entry into the ways that artists explore complex ideas about the social, economic, political, and aesthetic roles of art in African and African American contexts. Spiritualities:In Conversations, selected works of African and African American art provide opportunities to examine the intentions and motivations of artists who creatively explore multiple understandings of the spiritual. A Human Presence: For millennia the image of the individual has been a vehicle in the visual arts for both reflecting and shaping human identities. African and African American artists employ the human form not to represent reality literally but to explore cultural values surrounding who one is and who one can be. Power and Politics: The dynamics of power unite artworks in this section. African and African American artists employ a range of visual strategies--upended figures; blood seeping from wounds; poses and gestures denoting individual or collective strength, or its absence--in their explorations of power and its social and political implications. Memory, Family, and the Domestic Sphere: Artists have long represented domestic interiors, imaging them as spaces for reflection, family celebrations, aesthetic expression, memory, and more. African and African American artists have used domestic objects and environments to define powerful aspects of personal and cultural identity. Nature as Metaphor: African and African American artistic engagement with the natural world--from naturalism to abstraction to surrealist meditations--reveals how nature serves as a rich source of metaphor in the arts. Artworks on view here examine in distinctive ways the multifaceted, often flawed relationships that human beings have with one another and with the physical and intellectual environments in which we all live. Music and Urban Culture: Music serves as inspiration in selected African and African American works of art presented in Conversations. Transcending race, nationality, and culturally specific narratives, the artworks embody music as a universal language and consider the human relationships that form around its playing in urban and rural settings.