The wide release this weekend of the Barry Jenkins film “If Beale Street Could Talk” makes a new exhibition at Chelsea’s David Zwirner gallery all the more relevant. “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin” offers a multimedia glimpse of the “Beale Street” novelist, who died in 1987.

The exhibition has been curated by New Yorker drama critic Hilton Als, who played a rare recording of Baldwin singing the spiritual “Precious Lord” the other night as he discussed the varied types of works on display.

Visitors will see photographs by Richard Avedon — who was a high-school pal of Baldwin’s at DeWitt Clinton in The Bronx — that were published in their school magazine, the Magpie. There are also Avedon portraits of the writer, as well as a charming contact sheet of Baldwin sitting with his mother, Berdis.

While Baldwin’s relationship with his Baptist minister stepfather, David, who called him “the ugliest boy he had ever seen,” provided enough conflict to inspire his first novel, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1953), Baldwin remained close to his mother. The contact sheet shows Baldwin in a suit and tie and his mother in a black dress and pearls. They laugh and lean into each other like lifelong friends. A caption next to the photo further illuminates their relationship. “I used to tell my mother, when I was little, when I grow up I’m going to do this or do that and I’m going to be a great writer. And she would say, very calmly, very dryly, ‘It’s more than a notion.’ ”

The exhibit also has a lovely oil painting of Baldwin by his early mentor Beauford Delaney (1901-79), whom he met when he was a teenager. Encased first editions of such seminal works as the essay collection “Notes of a Native Son” (1955) and “Nobody Knows My Name” (1961) offer a timeline of Baldwin’s literary career alongside the visual works.

Another room at the gallery shows clips that capture Baldwin’s interest in film and theater. Baldwin wrote two plays, “The Amen Corner” (1954) and “Blues for Mister Charlie” (1964), whose first editions are also on display. For an author who bore such profound witness to the 20th-century African-American experience on a variety of platforms, “God Made My Face” gives a tantalizing overview of the extent of Baldwin’s cultural reach — and why he remains an oracle for contemporary artists such as Jenkins.

“God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin” at the David Zwirner gallery. Through Feb. 16. 525 W. 19th St.; DavidZwirner.com

New York Post, review