A new exhibition at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands, shows how Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, has changed over time. Using the latest imaging ...

Historically speaking, it would not have been easy for Addy, an enslaved, later free, African American girl, to get a nice new dress each season of the year.

The painting is the latest in a series of significant acquisitions of works by African American artists, including “Alabama,’’ a major work of the Civil Rights Era abstractionist Norman Lewis.

But African American hair braiding styles stood — and still stand — as a direct challenge to those outdated norms. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black is Beautiful movement sparked a renaissance ...