Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, Alabama
"The Caring Hand" Eva Oertli & Beat Huber
April
2024
Denise Murrell, Curator at Large, The Met Museum, New York City
"The Block" Romare Bearden
April
Honoring Survival & Celebrating Achievement
The Harlem Renaissance at the Met February 25 through July 28
EJI's Freedom Monument Sculpture Park opened March 27
In February 2024, The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism exhibition opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. A month later, the Freedom Memorial Sculpture Park, a new EJI Legacy Site in Montgomery, Alabama, debuted. Each offers a lens to view the expanse of the lives of Americans of color. At the Met, creativity, humor, beauty, and energy of the African Americans is celebrated among paintings, fabrics, writings, and photographs. In Montgomery, sculptured arms rising from the roots of lynching trees; the bent backs of slaves picking wealth for people without color; and surnames of recently freed people honor the trauma and injury inflicted by white Americans on Black Americans.
Together, these exhibits curated by African-Americans, form armature to the unfinished business of America. Rendering them as art unites the sagas of New York and Montgomery; eases teaching our history and brings us one step closer to learning the lessons of our history and one step closer to comprehending the inhumanity we are capable of and the fortitude required to survive.
Bryan Stevenson and Denise Murrell invite us in.
The New York Times and PBS NewsHour impart how African Americans claim the right to define themselves, to tell their own history, and to celebrate their creativity.
What motivates Stevenson and Murrell?
Bryan Stevenson tells us Why the Legacy Sites?
Equal Justice Initiative EJI (2:11)
Harlan Cotter suggests Why the Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism Exhibition
Did the art critics get it right about the Met's 1969 Harlem show or did they just not 'get it'?
Watch for next month's share!
Want more Harlem Renaissance?
Alongside its must-see exhibition, the Met has created a new podcast about the art and legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. These episodes are thought provoking reflections on the shaping of a modern Black identity.
Trailer Introduction to Harlem is Everywhere (3:35) HERE
An interesting addition - June 2024
On June 14, 2024, this article by Susan Tallman appeared in The Atlantic.
It is a review of the ongoing exhibition and much more. There are many embedded links that expand the show's context and content. One of particular interest is a link that will take you to Yale's Beinecke Libary and a March 1925 special issue of the social work journal Survey Graphic, titled "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro", with contributions from Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson.
The Tallman piece also includes beautiful illustrations and makes many more accessible through links. It provides background for the connections between Black artists in the US and European art, past and contemporary, and it highlights the exhibition's "preponderance of great portraiture".
Click on the painting by Aaron Douglas (right) to view the essay.
