Addressing the history and art of Black hair is an ambitious task. After all, as artist Sonya Clark posits in this volume, “Hair was the first fiber that people manipulated for aesthetic and functional reasons” (p. 106). The care and stylization of hair was an integral component within ancient Egyptian society, as evidenced by the stories, artifacts, and human remains from this era. Hair culture is prevalent today. Within the United States over the past twenty years, there has been a resurgence of love and pride in one's hair due to the second wave of the natural hair movement. But Black hair has not always had the privilege of being celebrated. Instead, the Black community has long struggled for the freedom to wear their hair without social or economic repercussions.TEXTURES: The History and Art of Black Hair is the accompanying publication to an exhibition at Kent State University by the same name. The book was released in December 2020 and the exhibition ran from September 20, 2021 to August 7, 2022. Both the exhibition and book were co-curated by Dr. Tameka N. Ellington and Dr. Joseph L. Underwood.In TEXTURES, the objects on display are divided into three categories: “Community & Memory.” “Hair Politics,” and “Black Joy.” In “Community & Memory,” the show recognizes the variety of tools that shaped Black hair, the role hair care played in providing financial independence, and the regular role community—be that of a trusted family member, hairdresser, or barber—took in hair care. Hair serves as a signifier of particular communities, a material memory of one's heritage, and a feature that has been fashioned differently due to larger social contexts. In “Hair Politics,” the works wrestle with what hair communicates and the related ramifications. Black hair was once identified as “wool” and has long been discriminated against. The physical and emotional toll of impression management is surveyed in this work too. Finally, in “Black Joy,” prejudice is thrown aside to celebrate Black hair in all of its variety and beauty. From education on hair care to ornamentation and expressive stylization, these artists take pride in the locks that crown their head.While Black hair is not a new subject in art, it is a relatively adolescent area of focus for exhibitions. Alisha Brooks and Elizabeth Austin-Davis founded The Black Hair Experience in 2019, an interactive pop-up exhibit with selfie-ready rooms that celebrate the different eras of Black hair, in response to this perceived vacuum in the art world. In 2020, LaShonda Cooks organized Hair Story at the African American Museum of Dallas. Hair Story brought together the work of seven artists, all of them local except one, to showcase the versatility, beauty, and complexity of Black hair. Asia Hamilton also premiered her exhibit HAIRarchy in 2020, featured at Detroit's Norwest Gallery of Art. HAIRarchy aimed to expand the conversation around Black heritage and involved artists from South Africa, Dallas, Berlin, Chicago, Detroit and beyond. The year 2020 also celebrated the work of internationally esteemed hairstylist Jawara Wauchope in the virtual exhibition COARSE: The Edges of Black Ingenuity.What makes the TEXTURES exhibition unique is its scholarship and scope. Beginning with scope, TEXTURES boasts the title of most ambitious loan exhibition ever organized by the Kent State Museum (p. 10). The book details over 160 objects that span approximately 4,000 years. The earliest art objects, wig ornamentations from Egypt, date as far back as 1980 bce; the newest art objects, two of which were commissioned specifically for this exhibition, were completed in 2020. The media are wide ranging too. The show includes photography, sculpture, paintings, and prints as well as hair products, appliances, tools, accessories, magazines, and other historic memorabilia. A significant number of these later objects were drawn from the collections of Madame C.J. Walker and Dr. Willie Morrow, both giants in the Black hair industry.TEXTURES aims to cover a vast amount of ground. Objects without a known maker are identified by their country of origin and tribe, when known. These objects span from Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Africa, to Suriname in South America. The dominant demographic is Black creatives from the United States. The exhibition also features work by artists from Nigeria, Jamaica, South Africa, Senegal, Zimbabwe, France, Germany, Ghana, and the UK. Included among the group are art-world icons James Van Der Zee, Augusta Savage, Gordon Parks, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Sonya Clark, Zanele Muholi, Delita Martin, and Kehinde Wiley. Not all contributing creatives come from the field of fine art; the curators of TEXTURES also invited accomplished illustrators, hairstylists, and graphic designers into the show, allowing for a larger, blended conversation.One point of possible contention is the inclusion of nine works by White artists. This can be a sensitive subject as non-Black artists have portrayed Black individuals or communities in exploitative and harmful ways in the past. One thing is certain, this decision was not made due to a lack of creative work by Black artists on the topic of Black hair. Instead, I trust the curators chose these pieces to fill the exhibition in meaningful ways. The curators communicate their awareness of visual art's broken past and attention to embedded notions of power and privilege both in the essays they integrate, like Underwood's essay on photography, and the occasional art caption. For example, within “Community & Memory,” the book presents two photos of Himba women taken by Shara K. Johnson, a White American travel blogger and photographer. This work is introduced with the reminder to “consider the balance between appreciation and patronization—even if the images are strikingly beautiful and created with complimentary intentions” (p. 92). While few other works are paired with a such a cautionary directive, this example makes a reader aware of the curators’ cross-cultural oversight.The TEXTURES catalog contains six essays, the first of which is by Ellington. No matter an individual's previous familiarity on the subject of Black hair, Ellington provides an accessible point of entry for all readers by recounting the hair stories that shaped her experience and interest in the field. From the shock and damage of post-pool hair to hair discrimination in the workplace, Ellington speaks on how these encounters fueled her interest to engage the topic of Black hair further. After graduate research and subsequent publications on the subject, Ellington was ready to extend the reach and creative potential of this work, a pursuit that ultimately culminated in TEXTURES. She concludes with her hopes for the project; in brief, that the work will inspire, educate, and bring healing.Lori L. Tharps, author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, follows Ellington with an introduction to the history of Black hair. Recognizing that the subject may be new to some and weighty for others, Tharps sets a tone that welcomes all to take a closer look at Black hair's layered past. In this essay, she begins with the prestige and power Black hair carried with it in Africa but how it was stripped of many of these glories when forcibly removed from its birthplace. Navigating through the demonization and politicization of Black hair in America, Tharps also highlights Black hair's resilience as well as the continued strength and creativity of the Black community.Dr. Ingrid Banks, author of Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women's Consciousness, examines the painting “Internal Battle” by artist and illustrator Keturah Ariel. In this analysis, Dr. Banks references a number of notable figures including W. E. B. Du Bois, Anita Hill, Dr. Willie Morrow, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Madame C.J. Walker, and Angela Davis. Ariel's painting presents a young woman whose hair, parted down the middle, is stylized straight with blue highlights on the left and in a natural, mid-size afro on the right. The woman wears a pink tank top, gold chain necklace, and a look of indecision on her face. Banks describes how Ariel's portrait of a young woman captures the all-too-familiar fear around Black hair stylization. Since enslavement, Black hair has been historically subjected to and policed by Eurocentric standards of beauty. This perpetual discrimination, in turn, has challenged the Black community's freedom to wear any coiffure as they so choose. While Banks goes into greater detail in her essay, “Internal Battle” presents a snapshot of the complex dynamics connected to hair texture and grooming.Dr. Afiya Mbilishaka, a hairstylist, therapist, and assistant professor of psychology at the University of the District of Columbia, begins by providing an explanation for hair texture variation. She then transitions to the traditional care, rituals, and varied significance hair embodied in African societies. During and after colonization and enslavement, Black hair was often manipulated to achieve unnatural textures in order to meet new societal standards. These efforts resulted not only in damaged hair, scalp, and skin but also psychological injury. Mbilishaka advocates that what is needed now are texture-positive counter-narratives and conjoined efforts by psychologists and hair care providers. While Mbilishaka celebrates the larger Black is Beautiful and #TeamNatural movements, it is also encouraging to see the existence of groups like “My Black is Beautiful,” their support of TEXTURES, and the presence of P&G and L'Oréal as sponsors.The “New World” societal standards discussed in Dr. Mbilishaka's essay are developed further by Zoé Samudzi. She argues that one of the reasons Western standards of beauty took on global power was because Western society feigned ignorance and explicitly rejected the idea that Africa possessed any signs of development. This mentality both justified the damage of imperialism and chattel slavery and labeled textured hair as ugly and unruly. Hair that was stylized and prized in Africa was now forcibly removed and criminalized abroad. While hair strands are dead entities, they have always been alive in cultural connotations and meaning-making. Samudzi takes pride that today, as different as her closely cropped hair may be from that of the Himba woman's indigenous expression, “we both understand our respective presentation as the pinnacle of feminine beauty to different degrees” (p. 42). Black hair is resilient, diverse, and something to be admired.Dr. Joseph L. Underwood, co-curator of TEXTURES, finishes the collection of essays with a reflection on Black hair and photography. Dr. Underwood recounts the tendency by White photographers during colonial and postcolonial eras to capture Black individuals on film without their permission and in ways that served personal agendas. But Dr. Underwood follows this preface with the reminder that artists from Africa and its Diaspora have worked behind the lens too. His essay proceeds to introduce three Black photographers: British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor, Senegalese artist Ibrahima Thiam, and Cleveland-based American artist Amber N. Ford. In “The Massacre of the Innocents… No. XXIV” by Lina Iris Viktor, Viktor both grieves and reclaims agency over the Black bodies once photographed against their will by European ethnologists. Ibrahima Thiam brings newfound life and attention to the work of early West African photographers in his “Vintage Portrait” series. Amber N. Ford documents the intimate, imperfect layers (tracks) of synthetic hair in her photos “Pronto” and “Feeders” as a nod to the way these accessories weave into identity. While the practice and past of photography will always have its flaws, the work and inclusion of diverse Black photographers will continue reframing fraught narratives and envisioning brighter futures.While the subject of Black hair is hard to exhaust, the work of TEXTURES establishes a strong framework and gives Black hair the attention it deserves. For those without much familiarity on the topic, the succinct string of essays and categorized objects provide a substantial survey introduction. The essays from contributing content specialists strategically build on one another and the inclusion of new work created specifically for the show guarantees something new for everyone. Should a reader desire to dive deeper, most featured artists have additional work involving Black hair and there is a seven-page bibliography at the close of the book, not to mention source notes at the end of each essay.