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Renaissance, Race, and Representation in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art
Renaissance, Race, and Representation in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art explores how African American artists reworked Western artistic traditions to address race, history, and visibility. The exhibition is on view at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, from October 1, 2025 to June 6, 2026.
Renaissance, Race, and Representation in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, a group exhibition explores Black presence and self-definition through twentieth-century African American art. Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Runs October 1, 2025–June 6, 2026.
Exhibition Description
Renaissance, Race, and Representation in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art presents a wide-ranging examination of how Black artists negotiated classical ideals of beauty, proportion, and humanism while responding to the racial realities of their time. Spanning the Harlem Renaissance through the postwar and Civil Rights eras, the exhibition foregrounds artists who engaged the visual languages of the Renaissance and modernism to claim artistic authority and cultural legacy within Western art history. The exhibition features works by Ron Adams, Charles Alston, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Hilda Wilkerson Brown, Aimé Césaire, Jacob Lawrence, William Pajaud and more. Together, their works demonstrate how African American artists adapted figuration, narrative, and symbolism to assert Black humanity, intellectual rigor, and historical continuity.
