Born in Saint Rose, Louisiana, Burroughs spent much of her professional career in Chicago, where she was a cofounder of the DuSable Museum of African American History, the nation’s first independent museum celebrating Black culture.

NOMA recently acquired the artist’s only self-portrait, which is now on view in the museum’s modern art galleries. This extraordinary work reflects Burroughs’s lifelong commitment to highlighting the contributions of Black artists to art history. It also illuminates the underestimated role African art played in the history of Modernism.

Katie Pfohl, NOMA’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, moderates the discussion with gallerist Dr. Stella Jones; Charlie Johnson, President of the New Orleans chapter of the National Conference of Artists; and Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, NOMA’s Françoise Billion Richardson Curator of African Art.

The group discusses Burroughs’s legacy and how this self-portrait helps tell a more complete story of art history—one that looks to a lineage of African art instead of just the Western European canon.