At The Met: show on African American Harlem Renaissance and Modernism
- 15 Feb 2024
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), NYC, will be presenting the groundbreaking exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism (Feb. 25 – July 28). Through some 160 works, it will explore the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and Chicago’s South Side and nationwide in the USA in the early decades of the Great Migration, a time when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South.
A debut survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition will establish the Harlem Renaissance as the first African American–led movement of international modern art. It will situate Black artists and their radically new portrayals of the modern Black subject as central to an understanding of international modern art and life. “Through compelling portraits, vibrant city scenes, history paintings, depictions of early mass protests and activism, and dynamic portrayals of night life created by leading artists of the time, the exhibition boldly underscores the movement’s pivotal role in shaping the portrayal of the modern Black subject — and indeed the very fabric of early 20th-century modern art,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO.
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“Many New Negro artists spent extended periods abroad and joined the multiethnic artistic circles in Paris, London, and Northern Europe that shaped the development of international modern art. The exhibition underscores the essential role of the Harlem Renaissance and its radically new modes of portraying the modern Black subject as central to the development of transatlantic modern art,” said Denise Murrell, The Met’s Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large.
At the core of the show are the artists who shared a commitment to depicting the modern Black subject in a radically modern way and to refusing the prevailing racist stereotypes. Although united in their shared objective to portray all aspects of modern Black life and culture, individual New Negro artists developed widely varied representational styles, ranging from an engagement with African and Egyptian aesthetics and European avant-garde pictorial strategies to a commitment to classicised academic tradition.
Featured artists include Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, Palmer Hayden, Bert Hurley, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Jr., Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, and Laura Wheeler Waring. The exhibition will continue with galleries devoted to genre scenes and portraiture that capture all aspects of Black city life in the 1920s–40s as seen in vibrant paintings, sculpture, and film projections as well as photography. Monumentally scaled allegorical history paintings and portraits of luminaries will provide vista views.
Galleries featuring paintings by New Negro artists who lived and worked in Europe during extended periods of expatriation will present their work in juxtaposition with portrayals of the international African diaspora by Black and white European artists including Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso, as well as Germaine Casse, Kees van Dongen, Jacob Epstein, and Ronald Moody. The New Negro era’s fraught approach to social issues including colourism, class tensions and interracial relations, will be the subject of a gallery featuring paintings, ephemera, and photography animated by film clips. The exhibition will conclude with an artist-as-activist gallery spotlighting artists’ treatment of social justice issues as the New Negro era comes to a close on the cusp of the 1950s civil rights movement.
A coda will feature Romare Bearden’s 15-foot-wide series of collages, The Block (1970), from The Met collection, to evoke a town house row in mid-century Harlem and that sustains the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. A significant percentage of the paintings, sculpture and works on paper on view in the exhibition come from the extensive collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), including Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Fisk University Galleries, Hampton University Art Museum, and Howard University Gallery of Art. Other major lenders include the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. The show also include loans from private collections and European museums.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a five-episode podcast — the first one created by The Met specifically for an exhibition. The Met will also host a variety of exhibition-related educational and public programmes, in addition to other opportunities that will engage the New York City community. On April 14, the work of William Grant Still — considered to be the ‘Dean of African American Composers’ with close ties to the Harlem Renaissance’s leading cultural figures, will be presented.
Jazz music is on offer (Mar. 8 and 9 and Apr. 26 and 27) while on April 15, The Met welcomes families from Harlem to explore the exhibition. Other family- and teen-focused programmes include activities at Museum Mile Festival (June 11), a Family Afternoon (July 14), Teen Fridays workshops (Spring), a weeklong Art Explore program for teens (Summer), and more. A symposium being held on April 27 features conversations, presentations, and performances by leading scholars, musicians, artists and filmmakers, while an Educator Workshop for K-12 teachers will be held on June 7. Workshops in collaboration with partner cultural institutions and community organisations as well as Walking Tours in Harlem, are part of the package. An illustrated scholarly catalogue on the vibrant history of the Harlem Renaissance will accompany the exhibition.