SELECTED WORKS BY BLACK ARTISTS FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

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April 14-June 14,1976 at the BEDFORD-STUYVESANT RESTORATION CORPORATION

Coordinated by the Department of Twentieth Century Art and the Department of Community Programs,The Metropolitan Museum of Art Presented through the generosity of Exxon Corporation Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the most recent loan exhibition organized by the Musuem's Department of Community Programs. Through the borough exhibi­ tion program, portions of the Museum's encyclopedic collection are sent out to be viewed by New Yorkers in their own neighborhoods. Three curatorial departments have provided material for this exhibition: Twentieth Century Art, Prints and Photographs, and Drawings. On the occasion of this cooperative endeavor between the Metropolitan Museum and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, I would like to salute the work of this organization which has revitalized the economic and cultural life of the Bedford-Stuyvesant area in Brooklyn. The support and enthusiasm of Franklin Thomas, President of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restora- ation Corporation, and Theodore Gunn, Director of Cultural Affairs, are to be noted. Finally, we are grateful for the interest of the Exxon Corporation, through whose generosity this exhibition is presented.

Thomas Hoving Director The Metropolitan Museum of Art Every community must have a cultural dimension to enrich the lives of its people. In continuing recognition of that reality, we are pleased to display this exhibition of art by black artists from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I hope this and other exhibitions given at our complex will stimulate greater awareness of the artistic heritage which is ours as Americans. Franklin Thomas President Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation This exhibition is a significant step toward achieving the desired goals of the Department of Community Programs in responding to the needs and aspirations of the community life of our great city. We are very grateful to Theodore Gunn, Cultural Director of Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, who has been a member of the Visiting Committee for Community Programs since its inception, and whose assistance and cooperation have made this exhibition possible. We take pride in Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art because it represents what can evolve through the cooperative efforts of people in the Museum, the Community and the World of Business.

Arnold P. Johnson, Trustee Chairman Muriel Silberstein, Trustee Co- Chairman Visiting Committee of the Depart­ ment of Community Programs The Department of Community Programs, since its The paintings, watercolors, prints, and photographs inception in 1968, has continued to face unprecedented and sculpture on exhibit have appeared in the museum's challenges brought about by the Civil Rights' Move­ galleries from time to time as examples of great ment, Women's Rights, Senior Citizen's Lobbies and the American art. This collection will continue to grow as increasingly widespread cultural renaissance in the great art is brought to the museum from the nation's communities of metropolitan New York. As a result, Black artists. The Department of Community Programs individuals wer-e liberated from old forms and patterns is proud of its role in this exhibition. of community relationships but not altogether from the residue of alienation. We appreciate the kind generosity of the Exxon Corporation which made this exhibition possible. With support from the National Endowment on the Arts, a modified version of the community center Catherine Chance approach was developed within the context of the Associate in Charge museum's strengths—its brilliant collection of the world's Department of Community Programs finest art and its comparable educational resources. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Today, the Department serves the museum and the community as a visible out-working network of museum- community relationships. With ongoing support from the New York State Council on the Arts, nearly 300,000 individuals today participate in exhibitions, lectures, workshops, special events, and programs such as the Department's Senior Citizens Program Spanish Language, Borough Exhibitions, Technical Assistance, First Fruits Workshops, and Exhibition Programs. de Knight, Avel—American, 1925- MEDITERRANEAN gouache on white cardboard 1966 Gilt of the American Watercolor Society, 1967 67.123.1 Chase-Riboud, Barbara-American, 1936- UNTITLED charcoal on arches special paper 1972 Gift of Barbara Chase-Riboud, 1973 1973.29 Hunt, Richard PEREGRINE FORMS welded steel 1965 Rogers Fund and Douglas Dillon Gift, 1970 1970.39 Lawrence, Jacob Armstead American, 1917- POOL PARLOR gouache on paper 1942 Arthur H. Hearn Fund, 1942 42.167 Woodruff, Hale American, 1900- TORSO NO. 2 crayon on paper 1971 Rogers Fund, 1972 1972.286 For thirty-fouryears, the Metropolitan Museum has The first two works by black artists to enter the been collecting works by black artists. These paintings, Museum's collection were Boxer by Richmond sculptures, watercolors, drawings, prints, and photo­ Barthe and Pool Parlor by Jacob Lawrence. Both were graphs—a selection of which appears in this exhibition- awarded purchase prizes from the Artists for Victory span three centuries and are distributed among several exhibition which was held at the Museum in 1942. The curatorial departments. In the Museum's collection are following year, the WPA presented to the Museum a four works by three of the best-known 18th- and 19th- large gift of paintings, sculptures, and prints by artists century black artists. These are the portrait Edward and employed by the Easel Section of the Federal Art Sarah Rutter by Joshua Johnston (1765-1830), who was Project; these included Blind Beggars by Jacob active in the Baltimore area around 1789 to 1825; Lawrence, Barn and Tree by Charles Alston, and two Landscape with Cow Watering in Stream and Landscape watercolors—Ci>/ in Blue Dress and Sell-Portrait—-by with Shepherd by Robert Duncanson (1817-1872), Samuel Joseph Brown. During the 1940s, the Museum who was a prominent participant in the art scene first conceived of an American Art department and centered in Cincinnati and Detroit during the last cen­ began seriously to collect works by living American tury; and The Sabot Maker, a gouache by Henry O. artists; Shoemaker by Jacob Lawrence was purchased in Tanner (1859-1937), who acquired an international 1946. In 1949 the Department of American Art was reputation and was the first American artist to be established, and a year later Charles Alston's Painting included in the collection of the Palais Luxembourg in was purchased. Since these initial acquisitions, works Paris. The Department of Prints and Photographs has by black artists have come to the Museum through made available for this exhibition works by Charles purchase and the generosity of donors, including the Alston, Peter Bradley, Preston Phillips, Frederick Floyd, artists themselves. We hope that we will be able to and James Van DerZee. The last two names point to the augment this collection in the future. range of the reputations of the black artists in the We are grateful to the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Metropolitan Museum, from the more mature and Corporation for their interest and support in hosting historically secure artists such as Van DerZee to younger this exhibition. Here, for the first time, these works by artists such as Frederick Floyd who have not become black American artists are shown as a body. Without the established within the art world but who are producing generous support of the Exxon Corporation, this work of note. However, the greater part of the exhibition would not have been possible. Museum's collection of works by black artists is housed in the Department of Twentieth Century Art. These LoweryS. Sims represent a variety of modernist tendencies, from the Assistant Curator naive vision of Horace Pippin's Victorian Interior to the Twentieth Century Art lyrical abstraction of Thomas Sills' Dance. CHARLES ALSTON (1907- )

Charles Alston is a painter, sculptor and graphic artist, and an educator. He was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He received both his B.A. and M.A. in art from Columbia University, and also studied at New York University. In the 1930s he was a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center and in the Mural Art workshops, where Jacob Lawrence was one of his students. He has also taught at Pennsylvania State University and at the Art Students League and City College in New York City. In 1958 he was the coordinator of the Children's Creative Center at the Brussels World's Fair. During the WPA years, Alston painted murals; his figural style of that period is reflected in his lithograph Barn and Tree, which entered the Museum's collection as part of the WPA gift to the Metropolitan in 1943. Painting was purchased by the Museum in 1950. Elsa Fine writes in her book, The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity, that the purchase of this work soon after the formation of the Department of American Art was cited by the Metropolitan as evidence of the Museum's support of modernism. In Painting, Alston is working in an abstract manner reminiscent of the cubist style of Picasso but utilizing a broader palette than that of the classical cubists. His use of reds, yellows, pinks, and blue-greens achieve a personal synthesis of his style. In the late 1950s, he returned to a more figural style which shows the influence of his abstract cubist phase. RICHMOND BARTHE (1901- )

Richmond Barthe is a sculptor and painter. He was born its faith in the American artist during one of the most in Bay St. Louis, Missouri. He studied at the Art Institute critical years in our history" (see The Metropolitan of Chicago, the Art Students League in New York City Museum, Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contem­ (1931), and privately under Charles Schroder and Albin porary American Art, New York, 1942). The exhibition Polasek (a Czech-born artist whose work is included in was notable in that it was organized by the artists the collection of the Metropolitan). Barthe had his first themselves, under the aegis of Artists for Victory, Inc., one-man show at the D'Cas-Delbo Gallery in New York an emergency wartime agency representing the twenty- City in 1933, and exhibited at the second Whitney three leading art societies in New York City. The Biennial Exhibition in 1936. With the purchase by the Museum provided funds to cover not only the cost of Whitney of his African Dancer, he became the first the exhibition but also the purchase of prize-winning black artist represented in that museum. In 1939 his works to be added to the Museum's collection. work was exhibited at the World's Fair, and two years later he received the first of two Guggenheim Fellow­ Barthe notes that his primary objective is to capture the ships. Between 1947 and 1969, Barthe lived in Jamaica. spiritual element of his subjects. In the Boxer, he takes During this time he completed several important great care to achieve a composition that is complete commissions for sculpture, notably the Toussaint and exciting from all points of view, and to find the L'Ouverture and Dessalines monuments for the Haitian characteristic look and gesture that reveal the psycho­ government. He recently returned to New York City, logical state of his subject. after some five years in Europe, to complete a bust of George Washington Carver for the Hall of Science. The Boxer, which is in this exhibition, was shown in the Artists for Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan in 1942, and was awarded a purchase prize of five hundred dollars. The exhibition was conceived as an "expression of the desire on the part of the Museum to proclaim ROMARE BEARDEN (1914- )

Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. began to work in collage. He has since evolved this He received his B.S. at New York University, and also technique into a highly personal expression, as in Studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the American Woodshed. His subjects during this period were Arts School in New York City, the Art Students League inspired by anecdotes of black life in the urban North (under George Grosz), and Columbia University (1943). as well as the South. In his last two exhibitions at the He began as a cartoonist for a school publication at Cordier Ekstrom Gallery in New York City, Bearden has New York University. He also did free-lance work for again moved steadily toward a more painterly activity. several publications, notably the Baltimore newspaper He has a house in Antigua; his time spent there is Afro-American: During the Depression years Bearden reflected in the luscious blue-green harmonies that have became a member of the Harlem Artists Guild, an crept into his work. He has also begun to focus themat- organization of black artists. His work during this period ically on the music of black America, particularly reflects his concern with the social and political aspects jazz and the blues. In his most recent exhibition, at the of the life of black Americans. His style, in which he Cordier Ekstrom Gallery (1976), Bearden used no utilizes strong cubic volumes to define the figures, has collage at all; he has returned to painting on paper, been characterized as "primitive." In 1945, Bearden had exploiting the textures and effects that manifest a sheer a one-man show at the Sam Kootz Gallery in New York enjoyment of the manipulation of the pigment on the City; the works in that exhibition showed to an even surface of the paper as well as the creation of the greater degree the influence of the cubists. The themes documentary image. were taken from the Bible and classical literature, and Bearden emphasized his flat linear designs with overlying washes of color, as in Golgotha, exhibited here.

After the Second World War, Bearden studied at the Sorbonne in Paris on the G.I. bill (1950-51). During the late 1950s, he eliminated figural references in his work, and developed a nonrepresentational abstract style. The image reappeared during the 1950s, when he PETER BRADLEY (1940- ) SAMUEL JOSEPH BROWN (1907- )

Peter Bradley was born in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. "Samuel Brown of Philadelphia deals quickly and boldly He received his B.A. from Cranbrook Academy in 1963, with problems of portraiture as well as composition. and also studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Brown takes great and deserved pride in his dextrous Detroit and at Yale University. He has exhibited handling of [watercolor]; he has developed in this extensively, notably at the USIA Exhibit of American medium several superior portraits and a number of Printmakers in the USSR (1966), the Museum of Modern fine abstract paintings." James Porter wrote this acco­ Art (1966), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (1968), the lade in his book Modern Negro Art in 1943, when Brown Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1970), and, in had attracted attention with his portraits, including the past several years, in Europe. In 1971 he coordinated two that are in this exhibition. the Deluxe Show in Houston. This exhibition, which was sponsored by the Menil Foundation, included Brown was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. He works by both black and white artists and was held in a graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum School in black neighborhood. The coordinators of the exhibition 1930 and had his first one-man show at the Philadelphia renovated an old movie theatre into a gallery, and College of Art in 1935. He worked in the Philadelphia involved residents of the community in putting the Public Works of Art Project and the Easel Division of exhibition together. Bradley was formerly the associate the Federal Arts Project from 1935 to 1938, when he director at the Perls Gallery in New York City, and joined the Philadelphia school system as an art teacher. currently teaches at Franconia College. He held this position until his retirement in 1971.

Bradley's print Mutsumi Maki represents his early figural The two watercolors in this exhibition are fine examples style. He alludes to the intimate interior scenes of 18th- of the clarity and strength of volume that the artist and 19th-century Japanese prints, with asimilardivision achieved in his definition of figures. Both works entered of the composition into distinct areas of patterns; only the Museum's collection as part of the WPA gift in 1943. the skyscraper skyline disturbs this mood of times past. Bradley's use of swirling, sketchy lines makes the various elements of the composition seem to be in perpetual motion, adding a focus of interest in themselves. BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD (1939- ) AVELDE KNIGHT (1925- )

Barbara Chase-Riboud is a sculptress and printmaker. Avel de Knight was born in New York City. He studied She was born in Philadelphia, and received her B.F.A. at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie de la from the Tyler Art School of Temple University, and Grand Chaumiere in Paris, and at the Pratt Institute in her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1960. In 1957 she New York City. His work is included in several major went to Rome to study on a John Hay Whitney Founda­ collections, such as that of the Chase Manhattan Bank, tion Fellowship; she also visited North Africa, where the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Norfolk she was introduced to African sculpture. She has lived Museum of Arts and Sciences, and the National in Paris since 1961. Academy of Design. He has had one-man exhibitions at the Larcada Gallery in New York City (1968 and At the age of fifteen, Chase-Riboud won an award from 1971), and in 1973 at the Babcock Gallery, where he will Seventeen Magazine for one of her prints, which was have another exhibition in the fall of 1976. subsequently purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. Her sculpture is characterized by a combination of Mediterranean, which is in this exhibition, was awarded materials, which are utilized in much the same manner the Grand Prize by the American Watercolor Society as African sculpture, in which each substance can have in 1967 and was donated to the Museum in the same specific content. She incorporates traditional craft year. The painting typifies de Knight's figural style techniques, such as macrame and braiding, as well as rendered in an opaque, tightly controlled pigment. the lost-wax method of casting metal. The untitled De Knight has written: "The painting is one of a series drawing in this exhibition, which the artist donated to of four on the theme of the sea. Although certain visual the Museum in 1973, reflects the monumentality and references would pertain to the North African Mediter­ sense of volume that she achieves in her sculpture. ranean coast, no particular reference to any one place was intended. The basic composition remains stable throughout each of the paintings: on a vertical format, sky, sea and sand form three contrasting bands of color and are meant to combine in spiritual unity with the figure, or figures, of the foreground. The mood of each of the works is established by the evocation of a chosen time of day and the paintings are subtitled in sequence .. .'Noon,' 'Setting Sun,' 'Night Shadows,' 'Dawn.' " HERBERT GENTRY (1921- ) FREDERICK FLOYD (1945- )

Herbert Gentry was born in Pittsburgh. He studied art Frederick Floyd was born in Philadelphia. A self-taught in a WPA art school (1938-39) and at New York Univer­ photographer, he started doing photography in 1969, sity (1940-42). After serving overseas during the Second and has exhibited at Someplace Nice in New York City World War, he studied art in Paris on a G.I. bill at the (1973), and at the Museum of Natural History in the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere, and at the Ecole des group exhibition Children of Africa (1974). Hautes Etudes (1946-49). He currently lives in Stock­ holm. Gentry has had numerous one-man exhibitions Floyd has an uncanny ability to convey the sense of in Paris, Copenhagen, Geneva, Hamburg, Brussels, isolation that one can experience in life. The two Amsterdam, and Stockholm. He has exhibited in this photographs in this exhibition show Floyd's technical country at the Burke Center in Pittsburgh (1972) and the skill both in organizing his compositions and in Galerie Andre Zarre in New York City (1974). exploiting special printing effects. The predominately diagonal and vertical elements serve as foils to the Gentry's art is "gestural" in the manner of the abstract curved silhouette of a man, or a delicate fern plant, and expressionist school. He combines an over-all abstract the strength of each shape is reinforced by the stark composition with figural references of great inventive­ contrast of light and dark. ness. His gouache Awaiting, in this exhibition, was painted in 1971. PALMER COLE HAYDEN (1873-1973)

Palmer Cole Hayden was born in Wide Water, Virginia. In 1973 Hayden received a grant from the Creative Arts He studied at Cooper Union in New York City with Program (CAPS) to do a series of paintings chronicling Victor Perard, and at the Boothbay Colony in Maine the history of the black American soldier from the early under Asa C. Randall. In 1926 he received the gold years of this country to the Second World War. He medal in the first Harmon Foundation exhibition of intended to focus on the all-black 10th Cavalry Regi­ Afro-American art. The Harmon Foundation was ment, in which he had served during the First World established as "an experimental service for human War. Unfortunately he died before the project was welfare," and was concerned especially with black completed. Perhaps his most famous series is the John Americans. The Foundation held annual exhibitions Henry paintings now on loan to the National Collection with prize competitions, to encourage black artists to of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. These paintings tell the develop a style "devoid of academic or Caucasian story of John Henry the legendary railroad man, who influences" and to portray various aspects of Afro- came from the river country of Virginia where Hayden American life. Hayden's style and subject matter seemed grew up. to fulfill this goal. In 1927 a grant from a patron enabled him to go to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He then worked under Clivett Le Forain in Brittany until 1932. Upon his return to the United States, he was employed on WPA art projects from 1934 until 1940. During subsequent years, Hayden developed a narrative style which combined the particular vision of the so-called naive painters with a virtuoso handling of form and color. While his favorite subjects draw on the experiences of black Americans in both the rural setting and the urban ghetto, Nous Quatre in Paris, in this exhibition, shows Hayden with three cronies—two of them tentatively identified by Mrs. Hayden as Hale Woodruff and Countee Cullen—playing cards in Paris. RICHARD HUNT (1935- )

Richard Hunt is a sculptor and printmaker. He was born in Woodlawn, Chicago. He studied at the Junior School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and received his B.A. from the Art Institute in 1957. He has been an instructor at several institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago (1960-61), the University of Illinois (1960-62), the Chouinard Art School of California Institute of Arts (1964-65), Yale University (1964), and Purdue University (1965).

Hunt makes welded sculpture. He taught himself to use the blowtorch after having seen and been inspired by the work of Julio Gonzalez in the early 1950s. Hunt has always been attracted to the aesthetic possibilities in the discarded parts of our mechanized, industrial world. His transformation of these parts into sculpture achieves a metamorphosis which is similar in spirit to the "found" sculpture of such artists as Picasso, and points to a Dadaist influence. At the same time, his linear and spatial configurations often make quite specific visual references to nature. Peregrine Forms, which is in this exhibition and was purchased from the artist in 1970, shows the change in Hunt's work that occurred around 1960; he began to work on a larger scale and his former open calligraphic forms became more monumental and solid in comparison with his earlier sculpture. JACOB ARMSTEAD LAWRENCE (1917- )

Jacob Lawrence is a painter, illustrator, and educator. Lawrence's work has always been dominated by his He was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Lawrence concern with social issues and historical events, par­ received his early art training at the Utopia Settlement ticularly with regard to black Americans. Pool Parlor, House in Philadelphia, which had an after-school pro­ which earned him a purchase prize in the Artists for gram for arts and crafts. Later, in 1932, he studied with Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan in 1942, and Charles Alston at the Harlem Art Center. In 1937 he Shoemaker exemplify this interest. They are among received a working scholarship to the American Artists Lawrence's few works not part of a series; he seems to School, where he studied until 1939. It was at this time have preferred the series as a vehicle to fully explore the that he started his Toussaint L'Ouverture series, the first range of his ideas. The two works exhibited here are of many series of paintings in which he chronicles seg­ rendered in flat, geometric shapes and a restricted ments of the history of the Afro-American in this palette, with a characteristic exaggeration of limbs, ges­ hemisphere. Between 1938 and 1940 he was on the tures, and postures to reinforce the narrative of the payroll of the Easel Division of the WPA Federal Art painting. This style gave way to a more expressive Project and worked on his Frederick Douglass series. linear play and three-dimensional modeling in his later Subsequent series have included Harriet Tubman (1939), work. Shoemaker was purchased from the Downtown The Migration of the Negro (1940), Harlem (1943), The Gallery in New York City, where Lawrence had his Legend of John Brown (1941-45), War (1946),5trugg/e first one-man exhibition in 1941. (1955), Builder (1968), and George Washington Bush (1973). He served in the Coast Guard during the Second World War, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946. Since then Lawrence has exhibited extensively. In 1973 he had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art. He has taught at Black Mountain College, the Pratt Institute, Brandeis University, and the New School for Social Research, and is presently Professor of Art at the University of Washington in Seattle. JAMES VAN DERZEE (1886- )

James Van DerZee rose from relative obscurity to na­ with mirror symmetry, even to the placement of the tional importance when his work was shown in the moles on their cheeks and the jewelry on their arms. exhibition Harlem on My Mind at the Metropolitan in Yellow Taxi captures one of life' s unguarded moments, 1969. Through the work of the institute which bears his with the blurred image of the man in action contrasting name, and is directed by Reginald McGhee, Van DerZee with the shiny, clear portrait of the car. In Elementary has been recognized as the dean of black American School Children, Van DerZee frames the fluid con­ photographers. figuration of the line of children, which spills down and around, with the deep perspective of the alleyway, Van DerZee was born in Lenox, Massachusetts. He which is reinforced by the rows of bricks and the edges began his work as a photographer in 1900, at the age of of the windows. fourteen, when he saw an advertisement whereby one could "earn" a camera by selling packages of perfume. The photographs in this exhibition are part of an In 1915 he got his first job as a photographer in a shop extensive gift made to the Museum by the James Van in Newark, New Jersey. After having learned the basic DerZee Institute in 1970. The Institute, which is darkroom techniques, he moved to New York City, presently housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he established the first of several studios in was founded in 1969 with the purpose of preserving, Harlem. Over the years his clients were varied, and collecting, and exhibiting works of photography, included such notables in the history of Harlem as especially by minority photographers. Father Divine, Marcus Garvey, Madame C. J. Walker, and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. Since he always kept the negatives of the photographs which he took, Van DerZee has compiled a comprehensive record of life in Harlem. He is not only a portraitist and documentarian but a curious and inveterate experimenter with various techniques to achieve special effects. He is as perceptive of the accidental aesthetic possibilities of life as he is adept in creating the posed, formal image. In Identical Twins, in this exhibition, Van DerZee enhances a fash­ ionable society portrait with a sophisticated sense of composition, posing the two women like bookends JACK WHITTEN (1939- ) HALE WOODRUFF (1900- )

Jack Whitten is a painter and educator. He was born in Hale Woodruff received his early training at the Herron Bessemer, Alabama, and studied at theTuskegee Institute School of Art in Indianapolis. In 1927 he went to Paris, and at Southern University at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. where he studied at the Academie Scandinave and the He received his B.F.A. from Cooper Union in New York Academie Moderne. He also had the opportunity to City. In 1964 he was the recipient of a John Hay Whitney study in the studio of Henry O. Tanner. In the 1930s Foundation Fellowship, and he has just been awarded a Woodruff painted several murals, notably the Amistad Guggenheim Fellowship (1976). Mutiny at Talladega College, Alabama (1938). His work at this time showed the influence of Cezanne, cubism, Whitten's Delta Group II, in this exhibition, was and African art, as well as Mexican muralists (in 1936 purchased through the Joseph H. Hazen Foundation he studied fresco painting with Diego Rivera in Mexico). Fund which was given to the Museum for the purchase In 1931 he commenced what was to be a long teaching of works by lesser known artists. Whitten relies on a career at Atlanta University. He initiated the annual art subtle variation between gray and black to create an show for black artists in Atlanta. Subsequently he was over-all geometric surface on the canvas. Through the appointed Professor of Art Education at New York interweaving of diagonals, as well as by the thicker University (1945-68), and was Professor Emeritus of Art application of paint in creating the black lines, he at Nassau Community College until his retirement. achieves an optical illusion of a floating linear network against the background colorfield. During the 1950s, Woodruff's earlier figural style gave way to an abstraction characterized by a painterly quality akin to that of the concurrent abstract expressionist school. Torso No, 2, in this exhibition, was purchased in 1972 from the Black Academy of Arts and Letters. Woodruff notes: "This is one of a series of drawings based on the human torso as a point of departure. No model is used and no attempt to achieve an anatomically accurate rendition is undertaken. The abstract yet 'organic' forms emerge and take shape of their own in the course of the development process of executing the drawing. Thus, in a sense, the process allows the forms to follow a self-determined direction. If, in the opinion of the artist, the direction leads up a dead end and winds up nowhere artistically, the drawing is destroyed, put aside, and a new start is made." SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

For extensive biographical and bibliographical information about the artists in this exhibition, see:

Cederholm, Teresa D., ed. Afro-American Artists: A Bio-bibliographical Directory. Boston Public Library, 1973.

Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum. Directions in Afro-American Art, with an introduction by Rosalind Jeffries. Ithaca, 1974.

Doty, Robert. Contemporary Black Art in America. Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 1971.

Fine, Elsa Honig. The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity. New York, 1973.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 27, no. 5, Jan.1969.

Foraudio-visual and archival information about the artists in this exhibition, and other black artists, consult:

The Hatch-Billons Collection 736 Broadway New York, N.Y. 10003

The National Conference of Artists New York/New Jersey Region P.O. Box 924 New York, N.Y., 10027 Alston, Charles Bradley, Peter Floyd, Frederick American, 1907- American, 1940- American, 1945- BARN AND TREE MUTSUMI MAKI UNTITLED lithograph, n.d. aquatint, 1962 photograph Gift of the WPA Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962 Administrative Purchase New York Project 62.539 Fund, 1974 43.33.564 1974.642.2 Brown, Samuel Joseph Alston, Charles American, 1907- Gentry, Herbert American, 1907- SELF PORTRAIT American, 1919- PAINTINC watercolor on paper AWAITING oil on canvas, 1950 Gift of Pennsylvania W.P.A., 1943 gouache, 1971 Arthur H. Hearn Fund, 1951 43.64.4 Gift of Mrs. Betsy Babcock, 51.18 Brown, Samuel Joseph 1972 1972.168 Barthe, Richmond American, 1907- American, 1901- GIRL ON BLUE DRESS Hayden, Palmer BOXER watercolor on paper, 1936 American, 1890-1973 bronze, 1942 Gift of Pennsylvania W.P.A., 1943 NOUS QUATRE A PARIS Rogers Fund, 1942 43.46.13 watercolor on paper, 1930s 42.180 Joseph H. Hazen Foundation, Chase-Riboud, Barbara Inc., Gift Fund, 1975 Bearden, Romare American, 1936- 1975.125 American, 1912- UNTITLED Hunt, Richard COLGOTHA charcoal on arches special American, 1935- watercolor on paper, 1945 paper, 1972 PEREGRINE FORMS Bequest of Margaret S. Gift of Barbara Chase-Riboud, Lewisohn, 1954 1973 welded steel, 1965 54.143.9 1973.29 Rogers Fund and Douglas Dillon Gift, 1970 Bearden, Romare de Knight, Avel 1970.39 American, 1912- American, 1925- THE WOODSHED MEDITERRANEAN Lawrence, Jacob Armstead collage on board, 1969 American, 1917- gouache on white cardboard, George A. Hearn Fund 1966 POOL PARLOR 1970.19 Gift of the American gouache on paper, 1942 Watercolor Society, 1967 Arthur H. Hearn Fund, 1942 67.123.1 42.167 Lawrence, Jacob Armstead Phillips, Preston Van DerZee, James American, 1917- American, 1946- American, 1886- THE SHOEMAKER UNTITLED YELLOW TAXI watercolor on paper, 1945 photograph, n.d. photograph, n.d. George A. Hearn Fund, 1946 Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, Gift of The James Van DerZee 46.73.2 1971. Institute, 1970 1971.571.3 1970.539.16 Majors, William American, 1930- Sills, Thomas Van DerZee, James ARNOI American, 1914- American, 1886- aquatint, 1964 DANCE CAMPFIRE GIRLS IN Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1965 oil on canvas, 1970 UNIFORM IN FRONT OF 65.686 Gift of Mrs. Annie McMurray, BANNER 1972 photograph, 1925 Parks, Cordon 1972.43 Gift of The James Van DerZee American, 1912- Institute, 1970 Van DerZee, James HARLEM GANG LEADER 1970.539.33 American, 1886- photograph, n.d. Whitten, Jack Gift of "Photography in the ELEMENTARY SCHOOL American, 1939- Fine Art," 1959 CHILDREN 59.559.53 photograph, 1932 DELTA GROUP II Gift of The James Van DerZee acrylic on canvas, 1975 Phillips, Preston, Institute, 1970 Joseph H. Hazen Foundation, American, 1946- 1970.539.1 Inc., Gift Fund, 1975 UNTITLED 1975.155 Van DerZee, James photograph, n.d. Woodruff, Hale Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, American, 1886- American, 1900- 1971 IDENTICAL TWINS 1971.571.1 photograph, n.d. TORSO NO. 2 Gift of The James Van DerZee crayon on paper, 1971 Institute, 1970 Rogers Fund, 1972 1970.539.2 1972.286 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks are due to Daniel O'Leary, Kay Bearman, Henry Geldzahler, Inge Heckel, Catherine Chance, Herb Schmidt, LeMar Terry, Herb Moskowitz, Jeffrey Serwatien, and Shari Lewis, of the Museum staff, for their help in organizing this exhibition. I wish to thank the Department of Prints and Photographs and the Drawings Department for their cooperation. Theodore Gunn, Director of Cultural Affairs at the Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, and his staff have provided invaluable assistance. Lastly, I am appreciative of friends—particularly, Linda Bryant, Directorof thejust Above Midtown Gallery, and Charlene Vander Zee, Assistant Director of the New Muse Community Museum of Brooklyn—who have aided in tracking down much-needed information.