Opportunities to experience art in Houston are multiplying every day, and now The Menil Collection is presenting its new exhibition. It is “John Akomfrah: The Hour of the Dog”, an immersive six-channel video and sound installation by the British-born, Ghanaian-origin artist Sir John Akomfrah.
This work, commissioned jointly by The Menil Collection and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), examines the history of youth activism during the civil rights era in the Southern United States, between 1954 and 1963, as well as how its participants fought for racial equity through nonviolent marches, protests, boycotts, and voter registration campaigns. It will be on view from April 24 to October 11, 2026.
To create the fifty-one-minute work, Akomfrah and his team scoured numerous archives, examining documentary footage, oral histories, newsreels, and photographs. Subsequently, he integrated this documentation of crucial historical moments with newly filmed material and tranquil cinematic shots that the artist recorded in a film studio.
In some scenes, the actors appear frozen in time or absorbed in contemplation; in others, they lie among objects imbued with social and economic significance, such as cotton, oranges, flags, segregation signs, and protest placards. For Akomfrah, this convergence of sources underscores the ongoing urgency of this story in the present moment.
“I am interested in the survivals of activism: the way resistance lingers in the body, in the landscape, in the archive,” said John Akomfrah.
“Activism is not limited to what happens on the streets; it is intrinsically tied to who we remember and how we mourn, and to how we project our dreams into the future. The dreams and the disillusionments of the activists of the 1960s continue to beat within our contemporary condition, waiting for new forms, for new expressions,”
The title of the work, “The Hour of the Dog,” is based on the Chinese zodiac that marks the hour of twilight, the transition between day and night. This liminal space serves as a metaphor in the artist’s examination of the cultural changes that occurred during the civil rights movement. John Akomfrah is a renowned artist and filmmaker whose works investigate memory, postcolonialism, and the effects of time and aesthetics, often exploring the experiences of migratory diasporas worldwide.
View of the installation of John Akomfrah: The Hour of the Dog. Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art./Photo: Mitro Hood
The Exhibition
Title: John Akomfrah: The Hour of the Dog
Where: The Menil Collection
When: April 24 to October 11
Admission: free
More information: www.menil.org
