Fifty Years Later: The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting - A Digital Exhibition

Museum of Art Museum of Art

Exhibition: Fifty Years Later: The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting - A Digital Exhibition

Dates:

Location:

Virtual Exhibition
This innovative website revisits the seminal exhibition, "The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting," organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 1964.

Selected Works

The cover of the 1964 catalogue
"Portrait of a Man (Abner Coker)," ca. 1805-1810, oil on canvas, by Joshua Johnson, American, 1789–1832. Museum Purchase, George Otis Hamlin Fund. 1963.490. Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
"The Orchard," oil on canvas, by Francis Coates Jones, American, 1857–1932. Museum Purchase, Elizabeth B. G. Hamlin Fund. 1963.491. Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
"Portrait of a Gentleman," ca. 1830, oil on panel, by an unknown artist. Museum Purchase, Hamlin Fund. 1964.5. Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
Contact sheet from opening days of the exhibition.

About

Click here to explore Fifty Years Later...

This innovative website revisits the seminal exhibition, The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting, organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 1964. While critically acclaimed at the time, this important exhibition has not received significant scholarly attention. This digital initiative features new contextual research about the exhibition and its reception, as well as a complete gallery of the artworks in the show.

Organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Department of Art History, and the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative.

Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Events

"Double Consciousness: Remembering Black Images in American Struggles for Freedom”

Bridget R. Cooks, Associate Professor in the Program in African American Studies and Department of Art History
Kresge Auditorium
November 11, 2014 | 4:30 pm

Art historian Bridget R. Cooks revisits the seminal Bowdoin exhibition, The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting in the context of American struggles for racial equality through the visual arts.

Free and open to the public.