The Represent exhibition, on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since January 10th, was developed by organizing curator John Vick and consulting curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw of the University of Pennsylvania to accompany the eponymous catalogue by Dr. Shaw and Richard J. Powell of Duke University. Represent showcases the Museum’s significant holdings of art by African American artists from 1801 to the present, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, and decorative arts. The interview below has been edited for clarity and brevity.

In the last US presidential election there was little mention of an agenda to improve the lives of the roughly 15% of Americans who live in poverty and the role, if any, the government should have in helping them. Both Democratic and Republican campaigns often made reference to “getting people back to work,” but concrete political promises to the unemployed seemed hard to come by.

This past week, the Institute for Economics and Peace issued its 2015 “Mexico Peace Index.” The report assesses Mexico along seven indicators—homicide, violent crime, weapons crime, incarceration, police funding, organized crime, and efficiency of the justice system.  Taken together, IEP’s analysis paints a very mixed picture of the country’s security situation.