Orange resident Douglas W. Harris Jr. has two photographs of Malcolm X and a 1982 avant-garde jazz film temporarily showcased at the National Gallery of Art.
The 82-year-old’s work is featured in the exhibit “Black Arts Movement 1955-1985,” which runs until Jan. 11, 2026, as part of the NGA’s effort to consider photography’s impact on a cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity and beauty. Harris is in the hospital, but his wife, Genevieve Harris-Fraser, and her daughter plan to attend one of the gallery’s two receptions.
“He’s very excited,” Harris-Fraser said. “He is disappointed that he will not be there. He had planned out that he would wear a tux.”
One of Harris’s Malcolm X photographs shows the civil rights activist speaking at Harlem’s Williams Institutional CME Church, with community organizer Fannie Lou Hamer and future University of Massachusetts professor William Strickland behind him on Dec. 20, 1964. The other captures him talking with students in his office at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem 11 days later.
Harris’s film, “Speaking in Tongues,” was funded by German public television and shown throughout Europe and at the Smithsonian. It features saxophonist David Murray, the late drummer Milford Graves, and poet-playwright and novelist Amiri Baraka. The film serves as a tribute to the free jazz artist Albert Ayler. The tenor saxophonist was found dead in the East River at the Congress Street pier in Brooklyn in 1970. The film begins at this location.
The “Black Arts Movement” exhibit can be seen free of charge at the NGA before it moves to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from Feb. 24 to June 14, 2026, and then to the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson from July 25 to Nov. 8.
The NGA exhibition presents 150 examples, tracing the Black Arts Movement from its roots to its continuing impact.
In addition to the exhibit, Harris has a contract with the Aperture Foundation for a book that will include photos of the Civil Rights Movement as well as musicians, artists, actors, and dramatists, and scenes from Africa and the Caribbean.
“I think the most exciting thing is the book that will be coming out,” said Harris-Fraser, who is scanning all of the photos for publication. She said it was initially going to have 75 photos, but will now feature 150.
Harris once worked as a cinematographer with PBS, ABC, and Newsreel, and he once had his own film company, Griot. He also served as a lecturer in film at the City College of New York, and later as a tribal historic preservationist, specializing in PaleoIndian Ceremonial Stone Landscapes (CSLs). He has also appeared in six documentaries by award-winning filmmaker Ted Timreck.
