The first picture to catch your eye within the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition concerning the director Spike Lee may very well be a wall projection of “Malcolm X,” the 1992 film staring Denzel Washington. Nearby grasp artworks of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Trayvon Martin, whose killing impressed the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Elsewhere, an indication from the segregation period reads “Colored Waiting Room.”

The Black History and Culture part is a jarring opening to an exhibition that guides guests via themes, ideas and objects that impressed Lee, 66, as he turned a defining determine within the Black group. He supplied greater than 400 gadgets for the present, “Spike Lee: Creative Sources,” which opens on Saturday and runs via Feb. 4, 2024.

“You don’t have to really be an art aficionado to appreciate so much of this exhibition, because Spike is not only one of those but he’s a bibliophile, he’s a sports fan, he’s a lover of history,” Kimberli Gant, the exhibition’s curator, mentioned.

Lee has been nominated for 5 Academy Awards, successful the very best tailored screenplay Oscar for “BlacKkKlansman” (2018). In addition to his in style movies — he labels them “joints” — corresponding to “Do the Right Thing” and “Inside Man,” Lee has turn into a staple within the courtside seats at Madison Square Garden for New York Knicks video games.

At the Brooklyn Museum, partitions splashed in eye-popping daring colours distinction with the wooden accents and paneling that flip gallery areas into what resembles a film set. Visitors can stroll via seven sections divided into classes corresponding to music and sports activities that Gant mentioned she hoped would attraction to a broad group of individuals.

“I don’t want this show to be so heavy that you’re leaving depressed,” Gant mentioned. “There’s a lot of heavy material, but there’s joy here, too.”

New York

Lee, who was born in Atlanta however raised in Brooklyn, has set lots of his motion pictures in New York’s boroughs. One part of the exhibition options information articles about Lee in The Daily News and The New York Times, in addition to {a photograph} of him as a baby on the quilt of New York journal.

The room emphasizes “Do the Right Thing,” the 1989 movie that examines racial stress between Black individuals and Italian Americans within the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Memorabilia from the film, which was nominated for 2 Academy Awards and has been preserved by the National Film Registry, contains the Brooklyn Dodgers jersey that Lee wore because the character Mookie.

Movies

Large movie posters greet guests within the part devoted to motion pictures and cinema, the place Lee’s Oscar trophy for “BlacKkKlansman,” in addition to the honorary one he obtained in 2015 for lifetime achievement, may be present in a glass case mounted on the wall.

Also on show are items from different celebrities, together with signed posters by the “Jurassic Park” director Steven Spielberg and the “Boyz N the Hood” director John Singleton. An adjoining room targeted on images has a letter written by former President Barack Obama.

The largest part in “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” is reserved for sports activities, with a small room solely for Knicks memorabilia. Those souvenirs embody a jersey signed by Carmelo Anthony and a web from the 1970 N.B.A. finals, when the Knicks received their first title by defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in seven video games.

A bigger room holds autographed gadgets from LeBron James, Serena Williams, Jim Brown and Michael Jordan, in addition to information articles signed by Stephen Curry after he broke the N.B.A. record for most career 3-pointers, a 2021 recreation that Lee attended on the Garden.

Aligning with the social justice theme of the exhibition’s entrance, giant parts are devoted to Jackie Robinson, the primary Black participant in Major League Baseball, and the boxer and activist Muhammad Ali. Near the exit is a signed jersey of Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who in 2016 ignited a fierce debate on athletes’ rights to protest by kneeling through the nationwide anthem.