Field of excellence · 1900–now
Black Visual Art
Painters, sculptors, photographers, and collagists who put Black life on the wall, from the Harlem Renaissance to the global art market.
From Augusta Savage's sculptures and Jacob Lawrence's 60-panel Migration Series to Gordon Parks's photography and Jean-Michel Basquiat's neo-expressionist canvases, Black visual artists have documented, imagined, and reinvented American art, often while fighting for space in galleries and museums that ignored them.
Resources
Documentary
Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
Thomas Allen Harris
170 years of African American photography correcting the racist visual record.
Article
The Photographic Legacy of Gordon Parks
Jesse Washington
Parks and the Black photographers carrying his legacy forward.