Art Gallery

Whatever your area of interest might be, art will enhance its content.

In the case of the Harlem Renaissance, we bring the works of Aaron Douglas and Miguel Covarrubias to your attention, but art decorates the other walls of our wheelhouse as well. You’ll find fresh revelations alongside familiar images that are contextualized in new ways.

Eva Herrmann Cullen Caricature, 1929

This skillful line drawing of Countee Cullen was included in Eva Herrmann’s successful book of caricatures of American artists and writers, On Parade. Herrmann was a bisexual of Jewish descent born in Germany in 1901. (Her mother was killed in Auschwitz during the Holocaust.) Eva Herrmann's stylistic and technical versatility in the mid-1920s made her a sought-after and busy portrait cartoonist.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet Congolais, 1939

After attending the 'Exposition Coloniale' (Paris) in the summer of 1931, Prophet wrote to W.E.B. Du Bois, enthusiastically describing the sculpture she had seen there, writing that she had seen "heads that are of such a mental development that are rarely seen among Europeans. Heads of thought and reflection, types of great beauty and dignity of carriage ... People are seeing the aristocracy of Africa."

Hale Woodruff Martin Luther King, 1965

This portrait of Dr. King was done with charcoal on paper. With only a limited range of colors to work with, Woodruff’s mastery of line, shading, and portraiture make this familiar face compelling to contemplate. He was 36 at the time of this drawing, assassinated only three years later.

Woodruff painted this portrait of Cullen in Paris. Casually seated in a chair, Cullen is surrounded by the attributes of his profession. The bookcase references his reputation as a poet; the statue of Nike (goddess of victory who descends to earth to crown a victor) alludes to Cullen having won the gold medal in literature from the Harmon Foundation just a year earlier.