‘KWAME BRATHWAITE: THE 1970S’

THROUGH SUNDAY 10/12. Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Free.

You’d have to work hard to overstate the power of Kwame Brathwaite ’s photography in 1970s America — or its tenacity in the visual lexicon of the interim decades, for that matter. Through the lens of a Hasselblad camera, the prolific photographer, who died in 2023, captured scores of iconic candids and scenes in progress — Roberta Flack backstage at the 1975 Grammys; Nina Simone clutching her mother at a humanitarian event in Washington, D.C.; a young George Foreman in patchwork overalls playing tug-of-war with his German Shepherd in 1974 Zaire. Maybe more importantly, Brathwaite created scenes himself, composing and shooting portrait studio stills that brought the “Black Is Beautiful” mantra into m

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