A father of Afrofuturism, Al Miller was a central figure in the mid-1960s circle of artists, musicians, and writers who gathered at the legendary Slugs Saloon in Lower East Side-Manhattan. During Monday night sessions, audiences revelled in the cosmic harmony of Sun Ra’s groove. For Al Miller, this sparked a deepening awareness of a new ‘tranformationist’ consciousness rooted in African heritage. Ever since, Al Miller has concentrated on transforming the non-material into the material, utilizing form, sacred geometry, text, and cross-continental exchange.

Al Miller’s cross-disciplinary projects have been widely exhibited, in New York these include the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD); the New Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Miller’s major public commissions are his Tree of Hope (1972) on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, and the Frederick Douglass Circle at the northwest corner of Central Park, which opened in 2010.