If you haven't been to The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, I highly recommend you take an afternoon and check it out. Not only is the building itself a work of art, but the museum offers half price admission on Wednesdays and free admission on Sundays. The art within the walls of the museum is well worth paying to see, but for broke college students, Sunday is the day to go expand your horizons.

Recently I was able to go on a private tour with my African American Literature class to see the newest exhibition, Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic. Comprised of over 60 of his works, the exhibition highlights Wiley's artistic range throughout his 14-year career. Wiley's love for art, however, began much earlier.

Kehinde Wiley was born and raised in South-Central Los Angeles as the youngest of six children. His single mother worked multiple jobs in order to take care of her children while simultaneously encouraging them to become well-rounded individuals. In an interview during the museum's series "Tuesdays at the Modern," Wiley recounted how his mom would put him and his twin brother on a bus and send them to art classes in Pasadena. A four hour round-trip excursion every weekend provided Wiley with the first sparks of his love for extravagant portraiture.

Wiley went on to earn a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and received his MFA from Yale in 2001. It was during his final months at Yale that he began to paint pieces like this, which highlighted a "type of black masculinity that was oftentimes misunderstood or couldn't be processed at Yale" (video).

After he graduated, he moved from New Haven to Harlem and began to "street cast." This meant that he would go out onto the streets of Harlem and ask people to come up to his studio to pose for pictures that he would eventually turn into larger-than-life paintings. The first piece that visitors to The Modern will see as they climb the stairs to the second floor is titled Willem van Heythuysen. Modeled after Dutch painter Frans Hals' portrait from around the late 16th to early 17th centuries, Kehinde shows an African American man in his street clothes against an ornate, and downright regal, background.

What Wiley conveys through these street-cast portraits is a sense of character depth that we would otherwise refuse to give these men that he found walking the streets of Harlem. Wiley says in his interview that he would show his models the art history books and have them choose their favorites.

Knowing this, you can't help but wonder what it was about the picture that they were drawn to. Was it that it presented an image they desired to present themselves as and perhaps, in some way, could not? Whatever the thought process, Wiley's talent and the execution of his portraits are undeniably breathtaking.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is located at 3200 Darnell Street, Fort Worth, Texas, 76107. To learn more about Kehinde Wiley and A New Republic at The Modern, watch the video of his interview during "Tuesdays at the Modern" here.