before becoming bishop of Dallas in 2007.

“What I wanted to do was to draw ideas in, to be able to look at the depiction of power, both beautifully and problematically,” Wiley said.In one portrait, Ethiopia’s former president, Sahle-Work Zewde, stands before a window, her nation’s bustling capital stretching behind her as her hand clasps a dangling flower.

In another, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, former president of Madagascar, is depicted sitting confidently astride a horse. And Alassane Ouattara, president of Ivory Coast, is seen clenching his brow as he grips a sword in his right hand.“I was thinking about the presidency at large as a symbol, as a seat of power,” Wiley told The Associated Press at the opening of his exhibition.“A Maze of Power” arrived in Morocco seven months after first showing at Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly — Jacques Chirac. It’s part of the Moroccan museum’s efforts to become a hub for African art ahead of the next year’s opening of the Museum of the African Continent, across the street in Rabat.

Wiley said that after his Obama portrait, he was able to leverage his connections to gain audiences with leaders from across Africa and persuade them to sit for him.In addition to Obama’s, the portraits also echo Wiley’s earlier works, in which young Black men appear in poses most associated with paintings of kings and generals.

Showing his would-be subjects a book full of classical paintings to draw inspiration from, Wiley said he prepares for painting by taking hundreds of photographs of each leader and then placing them in settings both real and abstract.

Although he wanted to show political power, the leaders’ individual political choices were not relevant to the series, Wiley said.“The Sphenacodontid Kind,” Dimetrodon, is displayed at the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Ky., Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Madeleine Hordinski)

“The Sphenacodontid Kind,” Dimetrodon, is displayed at the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Ky., Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Madeleine Hordinski)The issue has been repeatedly legislated and litigated since the Scopes trial. Tennessee repealed its anti-evolution law in 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that a similar Arkansas law was an unconstitutional promotion of religion, and in 1987 it overturned a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution. A 2005 federal court similarly forbade a Pennsylvania school district from presenting “intelligent design,” a different approach to creationism that argues life is too complex to have evolved by chance.

Some lawmakers have recently revived the issue. North Dakota’s Senate this year defeated a bill that would have allowed public school teaching on intelligent design. A newvaguely allows teachers to answer student questions about “scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came to exist.”