Click through to read Jason Moran, Keli Safia Maksud, and Ifeanyi Awachie on Aretha Franklin — and stay tuned for others from the two dozen contributions we commissioned on the occasion of the exhibition! “Each band delivers and delivers us. In the end, lives were saved because audiences saw these posters. The audience was insulated with other lovers of sound. These impeccable high visibility posters are prescriptions for balms in the aching republic.” —Jason Moran “I view this collection of posters not as aesthetic objects, albeit the sheer exquisiteness of each screen-printed image, but as archival documents that map histories and places and as they weave in and out of popular culture. They provide small hints of information, which offer openings into worlds forgotten, telling us about the environment within which many Black musicians were performing.” —Keli Safia Maksud “Later, she will hang the poster in her room, stare up at Aretha in her star-spangled frame and be transported, touch the words “Natural Woman” for strength when she starts to think about leaving him. The poster will see her through the 60s, through collective freedom struggles, through her own. And one day, she will pass it on to her daughter.” —Ifeanyi Awachie