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约翰•比格斯的《猎枪，第三区一号》（1966年）以争取平等的奋斗为象征展现黑人社区的韧性。

 

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Robert McNeill's Make a Wish (Bronx Slave Market, 170th Street, New York), 1938, shows people waiting for work during the Great Depression.

Washington — Social change is often a stimulus for art. A new Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) exhibition, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, underscores the role art played in achieving equality and exploring black identity in the 20th century.

Paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs by 43 black artists chronicle how they drew inspiration from the circumstances of urban and rural blacks in a segregated America. Art later became a vehicle for coming to terms with the difficult path to change during the civil rights movement and its often turbulent aftermath.

Robert McNeill’s 1938 photograph Make a Wish (Bronx Slave Market, 170th Street, New York) eloquently conveys the social and economic realities for African Americans of that era. During the Great Depression, housemaids waited at places called “slave markets,” hoping to be hired for a few hours of work. The photo shows people waiting under a sign that, ironically, advertises a movie called Make a Wish.

A painting by John Biggers, Shotgun, Third Ward #1 (1966), depicts the strength and continuity of the black community despite civil rights–era violence — represented by a burned-out church. The “shotgun” house — presumably named for its design, which allows unimpeded passage through doorways from the front to back of the house — is typical of old southern African-American neighborhoods. The architecture is thought to have originated in West Africa, from which many slaves were transported to the Western Hemisphere.

The exhibition displays a diversity of artistic perspectives, not all focused on social issues. Abstract painter Felrath Hines, for example, separated his art from his deep commitment to the civil rights movement. He did not subscribe to the concept of African-American art. “There are only prevailing ideas that influence everyone all over the world, to which the Negro has been, and is, contributing,” he said.

Innovative abstract artist Sam Gilliam’s large three-dimensional sculpture The Petition dominates the gallery with its sinuous, geometric, texture-rich swirl of colors. His stated artistic goal was to enter “the void between object and viewer. …The surface is no longer the final plane of the work. It is instead the beginning of an advance into the theater of life.”

Rural life is strikingly represented in paintings such as The Long Rows (1966) by Benny Andrews, where a woman toiling in the field is seen from the back, a child’s view, looking up toward a towering figure whose face is hidden. Claude Clark’s Resting (1944), William H. Johnson’s Sowing (ca. 1940) and Early Morning Work (ca. 1940), and Ellis Wilson’s Field Workers (undated) similarly afford glimpses into the hard lives of sharecroppers.

Bar and Grill (1941) by painter Jacob Lawrence depicts segregation in a bar divided by a screen, blacks on one side, whites on the other. The whites have the luxury of a ceiling fan.

Romare Bearden's bright, abstract screen prints reflect the influence of jazz and Christianity. Alma Thomas turned to the natural world for inspiration for soothing abstract paintings such as Atmospheric Effects I (1970).

Women have a large presence in the exhibition. Renée Stout’s modern cabinet of curiosities, The Colonel’s Cabinet (1991–1994), captivates. So do the works of Loїs Mailou Jones, whose paintings such as Moon Mask investigate her African roots.

Photographs by Roy DeCarava, Roland L. Freeman, Earlie Hudnall, Marilyn Nance, Gordon Parks and James VanDerZee capture different facets of African-American life: VanDerZee made portraits of the well-to-do; Freeman, Hudnall , McNeill and Parks open windows on urban life; Nance looks at religious experience.

Tony Gleaton, who created stunning images of Central Americans of African ancestry, said “My work examines our common elements and the disparities, which in making us different also bind us together in the human condition.”

The 100 works in the exhibition, more than half of which are shown for the first time, are from the museum’s extensive collection of African-American art, the largest in the United States.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the educational website Oh Freedom! Teaching African American Civil Rights through American Art at the Smithsonian links art, history and social change to help students interpret the civil rights struggle. SAAM and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture collaborated in the website's development.

This broad spectrum of African-American art encompasses artists schooled and mentored by great painters and the self-taught, like Thornton Dial. “Art is like a bright star up ahead in the darkness of the world. It can lead peoples through the darkness and help them from being afraid,” Dial said.