Michael Richards’s Free F’All Holds Flight and Freedom in Tension
Twenty-five years after Michael Richards died in the September 11 attacks, his sculpture Free F’All continues to ask difficult questions about Black freedom and sacrifice.
Twenty-five years after Michael Richards died in the September 11 attacks, his sculpture Free F’All continues to ask difficult questions about Black freedom and sacrifice. The Brooklyn Museum’s fall presentation brings renewed attention to a work made in 1997, before the loss that would so profoundly shape the way audiences encounter its maker.
A body carrying history
Free F’All belongs to Richards’s sustained engagement with the Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneering Black military aviators of World War II. The six-foot sculpture is made from fiberglass and resin with iron oxide. Richards used a mold of his own body, placing his physical likeness inside a historical conversation about service, exclusion and the right to move freely. The museum’s collection record identifies it as part of his Tuskegee Airmen series. Brooklyn Museum collection record
Its nails are central to that conversation. The museum connects them to both Saint Sebastian, a figure commonly represented pierced by arrows, and African nkisi nkondi figures. Those references bring different traditions into contact around a body exposed to forces beyond its control. Flight carries the possibility of release; the injured figure makes the cost of that aspiration visible. This is a reading of the sculpture’s imagery, rather than a claim that Richards intended a single, fixed message.
The artist beyond the anniversary
Richards was born in Brooklyn in 1963 and grew up in Kingston, Jamaica. He later studied at Queens College and New York University. MOCA North Miami’s account of his life emphasizes the relationship between that international upbringing and work concerned with racial inequality, belonging and exclusion. His practice developed through a network of institutions and peers, including residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. MOCA North Miami’s retrospective
That network matters because a memorial can compress an artist’s life into its ending. Richards’s place in New York’s artistic community was active and collaborative. He attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in 1992–93 alongside artists including Renée Cox, Lyle Ashton Harris and Dread Scott. MOCA reunited those three artists for a 2021 conversation about that formative period and their relationships with Richards. Their presence in the record gives his history the texture of shared work, friendship and exchange. MOCA’s Whitney program conversation
How an artistic legacy survives
The survival of art also depends on ordinary, persistent acts of care. In its 2021 program honoring Richards, MOCA identified his cousin Dawn Dale as the person who had stored and cared for his artworks for two decades. The same program brought Dale together with curators Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin and artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden to discuss the stewardship of artists’ legacies. Fialho and Levin had been working with Richards’s art since 2016. MOCA’s legacy conversation
That history changes the meaning of a museum encounter. A sculpture reaches a public gallery because somebody kept it safe, located its context, maintained relationships and made room for it to be studied again. Remembering Richards therefore includes acknowledging the labor that allows his ideas to remain available to future audiences. Preservation is a cultural act with consequences for whose work becomes part of the story.
Watch the wider practice
MOCA’s archival curator tour, embedded below, offers a useful companion to Free F’All. Recorded in connection with its 2021 retrospective, the program considers Richards’s sculpture and drawing, recurring materials, and the research involved in bringing the exhibition together. It is an earlier presentation in North Miami, not a tour of the current Brooklyn display. Official curator-tour page
The most rewarding approach to Free F’All is to leave space for those overlapping histories: the airmen it honors, the traditions it draws together, the artist who made it and the people who kept his work in view. In an anniversary year, that attention gives remembrance a demanding purpose. It asks us to stay with what Richards was thinking, and with the questions his art can still raise.
Also check out Cyclolore Magazine’s new DOSSIER Mining Issue & other publications we’ve released below!
DOSSIER Mining releases in retrograde 'In the Land of Chromatica' with Lady Gaga's Designer Xtian de Medici, Keren Wolf, FX Pose's Naomi Cruz honoring the life of Grandfather Hector of House of Xtravaganza as our 1st cover story & Award Winning Anna Schollerova from Nora K's Whisper Naked Shadow TV mini-series and much much more!! The DOSSIER Mining compared to 'The Aftermath' issue, & others before it, is elevated reaching a better and truer essence of the Cyclolore Brand from many aspects & will so moving forward.
Related Stories to read next from this featured panel!
The Smithsonian’s What a Dream Can Do offers a closer look at the objects, families and museum workers who keep Black American history visible.
Danielle Mckinney’s upcoming New Orleans exhibition asks what a portrait can reveal without surrendering its subject’s privacy.
Javits Frimpong was 15. His death has brought a Bronx community together in grief and support for his family.
He says he had paid his fare. His encounter with MTA fare inspectors ended with allegations of assault, reported injuries and questions that the agency should not be allowed to brush aside.
The National Association of Black Military Women marked its 50th anniversary with a gathering dedicated to preserving history and recognizing the contributions of Black women in military service. Held October 8–11, 2026, at Harborside Hotel in Oxon Hill, Maryland, the celebration carried the theme “Rooted in Legacy, Rising in Sisterhood.”
Keith Yamashita’s “What Season Is It, America?” was scheduled to bring poetry, photography and conversation to the Brooklyn Museum from October 21–25. This introduction examines the announced project, not eyewitness observations.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art is preparing to put its own collecting decisions on display. Announced October 22, “New & Now: A Decade Building the National Collection of African Art” opens November 6, inviting visitors to consider how a national collection grows and whose stories that growth makes visible.
Ibrahim Mahama’s The Harvest Season opened at Fondation Cartier on October 22, bringing Ghanaian history, artistic collaboration and the possibilities of cultural institutions into focus. The Paris exhibition runs through February 28, 2027.
At MoMA, The Surrealist Book turns the familiar bound volume into a place for artistic rebellion.
Mariko Mori’s All That Shines opens October 31 at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, tracing three decades of art that brings technology, spirituality and human connection into the same space.
Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home on October 12, just 22 days before the November 3 election in which she is seeking another term. The search has put a familiar democratic concern back in focus: how federal law enforcement exercises its power when voters are about to choose their representatives.
Adam Pendleton’s Some Wild Kind of Language opened at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum on October 10. Running through January 17, 2027, the exhibition brings eleven paintings and eight large-scale drawings into a museum where the setting becomes part of the conversation.
Community leaders and immigration advocates took to the microphones after the Marble Hill shooting, joining calls for answers and accountability. The Facebook video below captures their public response as demands to release evidence and abolish ICE grew.
Navanethem “Navi” Pillay has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her work advancing peace and international law. Announced on October 9, the award recognizes a South African jurist whose career connects the struggle against apartheid with the development of international justice.
Authorities have arrested Angel Carrasco in connection with the death of Nathaly Ramirez, a 23-year-old Bronx mother who fell from a 15th-floor balcony while holding her infant daughter. The child survived and remained hospitalized Thursday, October 8.
The Studio Museum in Harlem has fresh room for becoming. Opened October 1, A sustained becoming brings together Derriann Pharr, Simonette Quamina, and Taylor Simmons, the first artists in residence in its new building. Their different approaches to the figure give the institution’s next chapter a human scale.
Nolan Wells’ family is renewing its push for a federal investigation after a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict anyone in his death. At an October 5 news conference in Inglewood, California, his parents and attorney Ben Crump called for another examination of the case that has drawn months of public scrutiny.
Ross is shown in front of Good's car at the start of the video. Good had stopped her burgundy SUV perpendicular to the street, blocking traffic. Ross crosses the front of the car and moves near the driver's side without saying anything.
The murder represents a brutal period in contemporary history and is the most recent horrifying instance of political violence depleting American morale. It comes after Trump was the target of two assassination attempts in 2024; Melissa Hortman, a popular Democratic lawmaker from Minnesota, and her husband were killed last year; a health insurance executive was allegedly killed on a New York street in 2024; and MAGA hero Charlie Kirk was brutally shot and killed in September.
My coat was banned by manager Terri Butler saying that I couldn't wear it walking around the hospital on the floor where the heater didn't work and on a morning when it was 49° all with her even being told that patients were even complaining about the cold and the seats being too cold, asking for cushions to sit on. The coat was actually casual, professional and meant to keep you warm, the coat was not distasteful or anything. It was Autumn colored plaid & insulated. The manager Terri explained the heater on the 4th floor doesn't actually work and that the place is a work in progress. I never was informed of my 30 day review like my co-worker was able to be participatory for her 30 day review. This would have been a fair interval of time to meet with me and advise of any leading termination thoughts on any "challenges" Ms. Terri Butler reasoned for the separation of my occupation at Brookdale Hospital as a Credit Interviewer.
"America has opened the door to hell for itself," the official Houthi news agency published an editorial on Monday, threatening retaliation for US Navy attacks on their boats in the Red Sea and alleging that the US is aiding Israel in its heavy bombardment of Gaza by preventing them from enforcing their ban on Israel-linked ships passing through the Red Sea.
The announcement of the release coincides with rising anticipation for a ground invasion that Israel claims is intended to drive out militants from Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Israel stated on Friday that it had no intention of assuming long-term authority of the little region, which is home to some 2.3 million people.
His business partner, the radio host DJ Envy, who assisted in promoting the real estate endeavor, is also under investigation. Federal agents visited the iHeartRadio office where Envy works and took electronic devices as part of the inquiry, according to NBC 4.
1+ Year start-up, as Intake Specialist, you work in a 2 rm. Basement & defective computer equipment. 1 small bathroom for everyone in condensed space shared with field nurses as well when they come in to replenish their field equipment. Underpaid for strenuous duties, chaotic flow & training, early but growing stage of development.
According to Bob Savage, head of markets, strategy, and analytics at BNY Mellon, "the USD is unlikely to lose its global reserve status anytime soon - new currency unions should look to technology or green baskets, rather than gold- or carbon-based ones."
“At the time, we did not have the luxury of all the videos that we have seen now, that you and I have seen, and that the world has seen. Basically all we had were witness statements and he-said, she-said so our police officers and detectives had to decipher through all that and then apply the appropriate charges at that time,” Albert unpacked.
The Wuhan COVID Virus nightmare is continuing to shock us again and again as videos emerge from the country showing the weight of the tragedy in China. The first video shows what looks like a parking lot with dead bodies aligned everywhere the camera pans. The scary resemblance of when the virus first erupted in China back in 2019-2020, only now its worse with a cocktail of variants circulating.
NATO said that training flights will take place over Belgium, which is hosting Steadfast Noon this year, as well as over the North Sea and the United Kingdom. The exercises involve fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads, but do not involve any live bombs.
Twenty-five years after Michael Richards died in the September 11 attacks, his sculpture Free F’All continues to ask difficult questions about Black freedom and sacrifice. The Brooklyn Museum’s fall presentation brings renewed attention to a work made in 1997, before the loss that would so profoundly shape the way audiences encounter its maker.