Hue Gallery
Hartford
Aug. 8, 2026
As the West Indian Day Parade wound its way down Trumbull Street in downtown Hartford Saturday on its way to Bushnell Park, it passed by a smaller but no less important celebration of Blackness at a brand new gallery.
Hue Gallery, located right next to Salute restaurant, held its grand opening Saturday afternoon with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a DJ and a packed space for one of the few Black-owned art galleries not just in the state, not just in the city, but in the nation.
The gallery was packed to the brim with art of all styles, from photography to collage to all the multiple styles of painting. Many of the faces looking back at me from the walls were Black people. Sure, they were stylized, distorted and twisted, reimagined and transformed. But they were Black.
Owners Hype Williams and Amber Lewis have gathered artwork from all over New England and the tri-state area.
“We're basically creating this to provide a space for all creatives, with a particular emphasis on Black creatives and the Black community here in Connecticut,” Williams said. “There aren’t a lot of spaces dedicated to Black art, Black expression, and preserving Black culture.”
The range of expression on display was breathtaking. My favorite painting is the cover photo above, Weathering Habit by Hartford-based artist Payge Boyd. Her explosively colorful take on Black womanhood feels inspired by the early days of anime, a hybrid between the large-eyed but cutesy style of classics like Astro Boy crossed with the pop art sensibilities of Andy Warhol.
So many of the artworks were like that one, blending styles and influences into too many impressive pieces to include in one story.
Visiting Hue Gallery also made me realize something about art spaces that I haven’t been able to put into words before: the interaction between race and showcase, so to speak. When the works of African Americans are presented by traditional institutions, it’s often done to celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion– but that’s not the same thing as celebrating Blackness. The installations at those institutions are for explaining to others what it means to be Black, instead of being about simply BEING Black.
The artwork at Hue is not by Black artists; it’s by artists who are Black. That is a huge difference. It made the very act of walking into Hue feel like a cultural weight was lifted off me, that no one was looking at me to see how I interpreted things to know how they should interpret them. The artwork expresses not just how we interact with ancestral knowledge or systems of oppression, but also what we think about pop culture, nature, and any of the various serious and silly things that occupy our minds. Where else but in a Black gallery could one find Anthony Matteis’ Moses the Whaler, a painting of a man that looks very much like a Captain Ahab-type figure?
And I got to look around and see Blackness. In the artwork. In the owners. In the audience. In the media coverage. I have NEVER been to an art gallery event where Black people outnumber White people, not even the ones for Black History Month, Juneteenth and what have you. In fact, as far as I know, this is the first Black-owned gallery I’ve visited ever. Not just in the three years I’ve been doing this job, I mean ever.
Hype Williams and Amber Lewis have built a temple on Trumbull Street, and I do not use that word lightly. It’s so wonderful to walk into a gallery and see myself. I don’t mean brown faces like mine, I mean Black people who dream creatively of rugged seamen and Catwoman and sunrises and regular stuff.
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Jamil goes back to downtown to learn about a bewitching dance.
