Art in Washington and Its Afro-American Presence, 1940-1970

April 2 – May 11, 1985.
A major historical exhibition documenting the contributions of black artists and institutions to the culture of Washington.
Artists: Lila Oliver Asher, Richmond Barthe, Romare Bearden, Leon Berkowitz, Wilson Bigaud, William Calfee, Elizabeth Catlett, Eldizier Cortor, Ralston Crawford, Bernice Cross, Gene Davis, Richard Dempsey, Jeff Donaldson, Aaron Douglass, Thomas Downing, David Driskell, Aline Fruhauf, Robert Gates, Sam Gilliam, Napoleon Henderson, James Herring, Earl Hooks, Jr., Joseph Jasmin, Edward Jerimiah, Sargent Johnson, William H. Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Kainen, Wifredo Lam, Jacob Lawrence, Pietro Lazzari, Hughie Lee-Smith, Norman Lewis, Edward L. Loper, Morris Louis, Edward Love, Herman Maril, Lloyd McNeill, Howard Mehring, Keith Morrison, Archibald Motley, Kenneth Noland, Irene Rice Pereira, Jack Perlmutter, Delilah Pierce, Horace Pippin, Teodoro Ramos-Blanco, Malkia Roberts, John Robinson, Raymond Saunders, Charles Sebree, Merton Simpson, Frank E. Smith, Carroll Sockwell, Moses Soyer, Theodors Stamos, Nelson Stevens, Lou Stovall, Celene Tabary, Bill Taylor, Alma Thomas, Mildred Thompson, James Lesene Wells, Charles White, Gerald Williams, Ellis Wilson, Hale Woodruff, Kenneth Young.
Curator: Keith Morrison
It was said that the art of Washington had no character beyond the Color School; that it was a city of transients, of art by spouses of politicians and government who relocated to the city and left according to political elections. I had heard stories about the African American initiatives to help make Washington an international art center. It seemed to me that recognition of the city’s more stable art legacy could provide a profound and lasting basis for the establishment of its unique cultural roots. I thought Art in Washington and its Afro-American Presence might help do this. — Keith Morrison, June 2010
The exhibition Art in Washington and Its Afro-American Presence: 1940-1970 achieved far more than its title suggests. Not only did it document the presence of African American art and artists in the DC art scene over three decades, but it also demonstrated how black artists and their supporters contributed to raising racial awareness and advancing a modernist aesthetic in the District and beyond.
The catalogue for the exhibition, written by guest curator and critically acclaimed Jamaican-born artist Keith Morrison, opened with the 10th anniversary exhibition of the Howard University Gallery of Art in 1940, when the practice of segregation normally excluded African Americans from the mainstream art scene. Morrison points out, however, that racial boundaries were relatively porous in the District’s art circles at the time. Yet conflicts over art and race played out over the next two decades, as represented by the views of two Howard University professors. Alain Locke, the first black Rhodes scholar, believed that all African American artists should make the arts of Africa—the “ancestral arts”—foundational to their work, while James Porter, head of the art department, urged black artists to embrace the arts cross-culturally, regardless of race or experience.
By the time the Howard art department was reorganized in 1970, the terminus of the Art in Washington exhibition, most African American artists were advancing the plurality characteristic of modernism by referencing African art, in the vein of Locke, and by highlighting the racist practices that they believed defined the black experience. Morrison argues that tensions arising from this approach contributed to a solidification of racial boundaries between black and white artists during this period.
The exhibition, which was supported by a grant from The Washington Post Company, presented 108 works by 68 artists at the WPA galleries on 7th Street NW. Traditional African sculptures and textiles from the collection of Warren Robbins, founder of the Museum of African Art, forerunner to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, underscored the importance of the “ancestral arts,” while paintings by white artists Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland highlighted the interracial and cross-cultural spirit of the 1940s and 50s. Most of the artists had or would later achieve national recognition, including Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, David C. Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, and Alma Thomas, the first graduate of the Howard art department.
Importantly, Art in Washington brought, in Morrison’s words, “a bit more diversity to the forefront of WPA and perhaps to art in Washington in general.”