(reverent orchestral music) - I'm Starla Sampaco in the Crosscut KCTS 9 newsroom.

An acclaimed black history and culture show is open at the Tacoma Art Museum.

The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection is considered to be one of the most comprehensive surveys of African American culture outside of the Smithsonian.

The Kinsey Collection features artwork and historical documents ranging from the late-1500s to the present day, like a letter written by Malcolm X, as well as a first-edition copy of Phyllis Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," which was the first published volume of poetry by an African American author.

(soft new-age music) The collection includes works by and about black Americans that everyone should know about, like an 1885 oil painting of Mount Rainier by Grafton Tyler Brown, the first black American to paint the Pacific Northwest.

I'm Starla Sampaco.

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