Animated by Hope and Desire: 3 Black Artists at the Nation's Centennial
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During the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876, we know of at least three artists of African descent who were present--two as exhibitors and one as a visitor: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901), Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), and Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937).
Bannister and Lewis exhibited the best of their work--Bannister's landscapes, one of which won an exhibition prize that was almost forfeit when the judges realized that he was Black, and Lewis's marble sculptures created in the neoclassical style, one of which was her monumental "Death of Cleopatra." Tanner, whose family hoped that he would enter a practical trade, visited with the secret desire to one day become an artist.
Join Dr Kirsten Pai Buick, author of Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject, to learn about this extraordinary time in the development of the nation and in the history of African Americans who dared to enter the fine arts. Not always triumphant and oftentimes devastating, nevertheless, they left us all a legacy of which to be proud.