Exhibiting Forgiveness: Film Screening and Discussion

Join MoAD, SFMOMA, and Roadside Attractions for a Bay Area special advanced screening and discussion of Titus Kaphar’s new feature film, Exhibiting Forgiveness. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Kaphar and MoAD’s Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs Key Jo Lee, moderated by MoAD’s Cultural Critic-in-Residence Dr. Artel Great.

Exhibiting Forgiveness follows Tarrell (André Holland), an admired American painter who lives with his wife, singer Aisha (Andra Day), and their young son, Jermaine. Tarrell’s artwork excavates beauty from the anguish of his youth, keeping past wounds at bay. His path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks), a conscience-stricken man desperate to reconcile. Tarrell’s mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), a pious woman with a profound and joyful spirituality, hopes that Tarrell can open his heart to forgiveness, giving them all another chance at being a family. Tarrell and La’Ron learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving in this raw and deeply moving film.

This program is presented in conjunction with Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week. Exhibiting Forgiveness opens exclusively in theaters nationwide October 18.

About the speakers

Titus Kaphar’s art is in collections of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and SFMOMA. His short films include The Jerome Project (2016) and Shut Up and Paint (2022). Exhibiting Forgiveness is his feature debut.

Key Jo Lee (@keyjolee) is chief of curatorial affairs and public programs at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Lee has a master’s degree from and is a PhD candidate in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University. Her first book, Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking, was published by Yale University Press and The Cleveland Museum of Art in January 2023.

Dr. Artel Great (@dr.artelgreat) is the inaugural cultural critic-in-residence at MoAD and the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African American Cinema Studies and Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at San Francisco State University. He is also an Independent Spirit Award–nominated filmmaker and film and media scholar who has written on Black cinema and popular culture in both mainstream and academic publications.

Support for Public Programs and Artist Talks at SFMOMA is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series.