Art, science and hidden histories

Tavares Strachan's works at LACMA mark breakthroughs by Black people.

- BY TYRONE BEASON

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times.

ARTIST Tavares Strachan stands amid his "The Day Tomorrow Began" exhibit.

Tavares Strachan loves to blur the lines that separate art, science and historical reckoning — as well as past, present and future.

The native of Nassau, Bahamas, once carved out a 4.5-ton block of ice in the Alaskan Arctic, had it FedEx’ed to the island nation and displayed it in a solar-powered freezer — an extreme commentary on climate change, displacement and interconnectedness.

Strachan became the first Bahamian to visit the North Pole to understand the harsh conditions that in 1909 greeted Matthew Henson — the Black explorer who accompanied Cmdr. Robert Peary on polar expeditions and was likely the first human to stand on top of the world. His feat went unacknowledged for years because he was Black.

In another project, Strachan honored America's first Black astronaut, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. He died in a plane crash while training a test pilot in 1968 before he could take part in any space mission. So Strachan sent a replica of an artwork inspired by Lawrence into orbit on a SpaceX rocket.

Now a collection of Strachan's work titled "The Day Tomorrow Began" is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for his first museum show in the city.

Photographs by ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times TAVARES STRACHAN'S "The Day Tomorrow Began" exhibit at LACMA includes artworks that celebrate scientific breakthroughs made by Black people.