NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — To celebrate Black History Month, the Paley Center for Media has a new exhibit celebrating nine decades of the Black experience on television.
The Paley Center for Media’s vice president, Paul Allen, gave CBS2’s Dave Carlin a tour of “Salute to Black Achievements in Television.”
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“To see a Black face on television, it really changed the cultural landscape,” Allen said.
The exhibit takes up two floors and looks back at nine decades of media.
“It’s really fun. It’s really interactive,” Allen said.
It features moments that touched our hearts and changed perceptions, from Sidney Poitier on “Philco Television Playhouse” to Stevie Wonder on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” from Martin Luther King Jr. to “Roots” and “Star Trek.”
“There’s something here for everyone,” Allen said.
That includes sports, dance shows, talk shows and countless TV characters who became so present in our lives, we think of many of them as family.
For some, that includes the cast of a show celebrating its 50th anniversary, “Sanford and Son.”
“This show aired 1972 and really led the way in terms of other Black sitcoms that followed … The Black father-son dynamic, which was something that this show really focused on … He wanted to have his own business and so that was another underlying theme as well about this show,” Allen said.
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On a big screen, visitors get to see rare and riveting performances from the greats, including two we recently lost — Sidney Poitier and Michael K. Williams.
Ron Simon is senior curator at Paley Center.
“We’re very proud of the Sidney Poitier drama ‘A Man Is Ten Feet Tall’ … He plays a dockworker … There were so many stereotypical roles in the ’50s, but it was Poitier who gave humanity to his character,” he said. “We’re going to pair it with another great performance by Michael K Williams, who created the character Omar Little … so essential to ‘The Wire,’ so you can see these two characters that meant so much in different eras of television.”
A BLAZINGLY FANTASTIC New Exhibit As Paley Center For Media Celebrates Black Achievements In Television For #BlackHistoryMonth Here Are Some #BehindTheScenes Pics With @dana_riccardi @CBSNewYork @paleycenter pic.twitter.com/YdTgnHlkBs
— Dave Carlin (@DaveCarlinTV) February 4, 2022
Also on display are costumes from hit shows throughout the years, shining a spotlight on the creatives who helped make the shows happen. The exhibit includes a suit worn by Maya Rudolph when she played Kamala Harris on “Saturday Night Live.”
“People are really excited about this exhibition, so people can come in and watch and find some of those hidden gems,” Allen said.
Gems that include the world’s greatest music, performances that thrilled us and made a difference, like Whitney Houston at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards, Childish Gambino performing “This Is America” on “Saturday Night Live,” and Alicia Keys performing “Empire State of Mind.”
It’s the story of our city, our country and the world, and how television brought it all home.
The exhibit opens Saturday and runs through Feb. 27.
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For more information on the Paley Center’s Black History Month events, click here.
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