From the depths of despair to the heights of hope, reflections on this Juneteenth weekend:

It was a no-brainer this weekend to maintain a perfect record of attendance at Jilchristina Vest’s Juneteenth block party. And, it was a free Saturday admission day for the Kehinde Wiley exhibit titled An Archaeology of Silence at The de Young Museum, so I set out early to ensure spending plenty of time at both.

Together, those events elicited a range of emotions as wide as the arc of past, present, and future Black experience. The contrast between the two left a mark.

Placards outside of An Archaeology of Silence stated the exhibit’s purpose and warned of its psychological and emotional effects.

Mostly alone in the dark, quiet gallery, time and space let me study and meditate upon each image of a dead, dying, sleeping or grieving Black body. Soon: a sadness similar to the experience of A Visit to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the museums and memorials in Mississippi and Montgomery.

The space between each of Wiley’s oil paintings and bronze sculptures, the strategic spotlighting, and the variety of size and scale of the pieces created time to fully experience them individually. Marveling from a distance at Wiley’s technical prowess, I was pulled in for closer examination of each work.

Wiley’s embodiment and conveyance of Black excellence — like that of say, Muhammad Ali or Billie Holiday — would not let me look away no matter how gruesome the rendering, how twisted the dead or dying figure. Multiplying that by close study of all 25 works — my face inches from veiny painted limbs that reveal no brushstrokes, squatting to look up into a sculpture’s empty eyes — created a cumulative effect of overwhelm.

A one-hour walk through would be enough, and I wanted to get to Jil’s Juneteenth event. But nearing the exit/entrance point, a docent’s tour was beginning, so I tagged along and learned so much more that I asked if he was a de Young employee or a Wiley expert. He introduced himself as Abram Jackson, the museum’s director of interpretation.

Along the way, I took these photos.

The exhibit title references “a reality deeply understood by Black persons but silenced by socially dominant powers for far too long.” Wiley’s work not only shatters the silence but ensures that anyone listening will understand.

The Respite Room helped…not to ease the sadness but to allow for functional transition back to the real world. Jil’s 3rd Annual Free the People Community Block Party helped ease the sadness.

Community flourishes there as nowhere else I know. In the shadow of the Women of the Black Panther Party Mural and Museum, which makes you literally “look up to Black women,” Jil brings to life the best of the BPP’s heyday in the form of social programs.

As you’ll see in the video below, the event feeds the community with free groceries, art, music, fun, refreshments, healthcare, and empowering information that helps generate agency, autonomy, and dignity in even the most lost and broken souls of the neighborhood known as Lower Bottoms. Jil is a whirlwind at the event, hugging new and old friends, charming shy children, handing out buttons, directing volunteers, head on a swivel, checking “Are you OK, sister?” and as shown at the end of the video, serving food when the line gets too long.

What you didn’t see in the video, but which I saw in person and which lifted the post-Kehinde Wiley gloom, was Jil standing with a man whose tattered clothing was covered in the roadside straw he’d slept in and staggered out of onto her street, addressing him by name and making sure he had all the free everything he could carry.