Tag: Black Excellence

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/17/g-s1-70053/stanley-clarke-tiny-desk-concert

Clarke’s storied career has been awash with showcases in his virtuosity on the acoustic and electric basses. He’s worked with fellow music titans like Chick Corea, George Duke, Jean Luc Ponty and Al Di Meola, and has scored for film and television. From 1974–1976, Clarke dropped a series of solo albums (Stanley Clarke, Journey to Love and School Days) that would herald his status as a force in music and foreshadow his 2022 designation as an NEA Jazz Master.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Whittaker

Isabella Whittaker (born February 15, 2002) is an American sprinter. She is the North American indoor record holder for the 400 m dash with a time of 49.24 seconds, set on March 15, 2025, in Virginia Beach.^[1]

https://saulnash.com/pages/about

Raised in North East London, Saul Nash is a designer who established his eponymous brand in 2018. At the core of the brand is Nash’s desire to create technical garments for movement; his body of work oscillates between the world of fashion and dance.

https://nicholasdaley.net/pages/about

Community, craftsmanship and culture lie at the heart of Nicholas Daley’s work. Having graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2013, the London-based designer launched his eponymous brand in 2015. Embedded in his lineage, his practise intertwines personal narrative with wider black British and diasporic themes, incorporating tradition, authenticity, and diversity.

Clothing deeply rooted in both present and past, Daley reconsiders meaningful subcultural movements through his contemporary menswear wardrobe. Incorporating bespoke textiles and complex finishes into every collection, the label partners with a range of artisan makers in the UK and beyond to infuse garments with nuance and depth, expanding its sustainable systems through ethical sourcing and innovative repurposing.

https://www.essence.com/fashion/designer-spotlight-kwasi-paul-samuel-boakye

Samuel Boakye finds purpose in synthesizing the creativity of diasporic culture. It’s how he makes sense of the world. His early musical influences, Teddy Pendergrass and Fela Kuti, and his father’s affinity for the global Black musical tradition shaped Boakye’s appreciation for the diaspora’s expansive art styles. 

https://www.tandafrancis.com/statment-new

Tanda Francis is a Brooklyn based artist with a primary focus of creating public art including monumental African heads. Her work addresses diasporic African people who are too often underrepresented in public art. She sees the rituals and customs rooted in a spiritual and ancestral past as a significant means of understanding and addressing the contemporary and future condition facing humanity. She uses her work to activate a dialog of universal origin to cross cultural barriers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Bunch

Lonnie Griffith Bunch III (born November 18, 1952) is an American educator and historian. Bunch is the fourteenth secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the first African American and first historian to serve as head of the Smithsonian. He has spent most of his career as a history museum curator and administrator.

Bunch served as the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) from 2005 to 2019. He previously served as president and director of the Chicago History Museum (Chicago Historical Society) from 2000 to 2005.^[1] In the 1980s, he was the first curator at the California African American Museum, and then a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where, in the 1990s, he rose to head curatorial affairs. In 2020, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.^[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunde_Adebimpe

Babatunde Omoroga Adebimpe (pronunciation^ⓘ; born February 25, 1975) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor. He is best known as a founding member and co-lead vocalist of the Brooklyn-based band TV on the Radio, with whom he has recorded five studio albums. In April 2025, Adebimpe released his debut solo album, Thee Black Boltz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Yolande_Daniels

J. Yolande Daniels (born 1962) is an American architect, designer and educator. She is a founding principal of studioSUMO, an architecture firm that speaks to socio-cultural landscapes through design.^[2]

Daniels came to find her voice as a black woman, the figure she often found “objectified or negated in the approach to architecture.”^[5] The highlights of her earlier works and personal research focus on the critiques on the techniques of power – gender, sexuality and race – and how these social structures shape the built environment in the form of architecture.^{[citation neede}