Ekow Eshun on the power of Black figuration and his new London show

This week, the exhibition The Time Is Always Now, featuring 22 artists from the African diaspora whose work takes the Black figure as its starting point, opened at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and will tour to Philadelphia later in the year. We explore the show with its curator Ekow Eshun. André BretonPhoto: Wikimedia CommonsPlus, 2024 marks the centenary of the the first Surrealist manifesto by André Breton, and the first of a fresh series of exhibitions focusing on the movement opened at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels on Wednesday, before travelling to the Centre Pompidou later in the year and Hamburg, Madrid and Philadelphia in 2025. But what did that first manifesto contain and how did it influence the course of the movement? Alyce Mahon, a Surrealism specialist and professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Cambridge, tells us more. Tonita Peña; Eagle Dance (c.1932–33)Promised gift, The William P. Healey Collection of Native American Art; © Estate of Tonita PeñaAnd this episode’s Work of the Week is Eagle Dance (1934) by Tonita Peña, one of the leading Native American Pueblo artists of the 20th century. It features in a new exhibition, Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, at the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US. Alexander Brier Marr, the associate curator of Native American art at the museum, joins us to discuss the painting.The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery, London, 22 February-19 May; The Box, Plymouth, UK, 29 June-29 September; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 9 November-9 February 2025.Alyce Mahon is the co-editor of a new International Journal of Surrealism, published by Minnesota University Press; Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World, by Alyce Mahon, Yale University Press, published in September. IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 21 February-21 July; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 4 September-13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, 4 February–11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June 2025-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, US, autumn 2025–spring 2026Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, until 14 July.