Carved directly from a marble block, Man of Sorrows depicts a black Christ wearing a crown of thorns, with his eyes closed tightly and lips pursed in intense, contained agony. Chicagoan Marion Perkins was a leading figure at the South Side Community Art Center as a playwright and social activist as well as an artist. When asked to comment on Man of Sorrows while exhibiting it at the Art Institute in 1951, he left little ambiguity about his intentions for the work: “The reflection of the suffering of the Negro people in this head of Christ is an acid test of American democracy.”
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
C. J. Bullict, “Student Takes Highest Chicago Honors,” The Art Digest (June 1, 1951): 12 (ill.).
Marion Perkins, Problems of the Black Artist (Free Black Press, 1971), ill. cover.
Andrew Patner, “Breaking Barriers: A Chicago Artist’s Posthumous Acclaim,” Chicago Sun-Times, October 24, 1999, 6E (ill.).
Daniel Schulman, “Marion Perkins: A Chicago Sculptor Rediscovered,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999), 220–243, figs. 1, 21.
Susan F. Rossen, “Introduction,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999), 141.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), cat. 170.
Julia Perkins, Michael Flug, and David Lusenhof, eds., “to see reality in a new light”: The Art and Activism of Marion Perkins, exh. cat. (Vivian G. Harsh Society and Third World Press, 2013), 28–29 (ill.).
Sarah Kelly Oehler, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 91–93, cat. 93 (ill.).
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 55th Annual Exhibition, Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, May 31–July 8, 1951, cat. 130 (ill.).
New York, The Downtown Gallery, Artists of Chicago, Sept. 14–Oct. 2, 1954, cat. 28; 1020 Art Center, Chicago, Illinois, Oct. 15–Nov. 15, 1954, cat. 30.
Highland Park, IL, Willet House, Week of Art in Highland Park, Feb. 2–Mar. 1, 1959.
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Art in Illinois, In Honor of the Illinois Sesquicentennial, June 15– Sept. 8, 1968, checklist only.
Springfield, Illinois, Illinois State Museum, Painters and Sculptors in Illinois: 1820–1945, Oct. 30–Dec. 12, 1971; Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, Feb. 6–27, 1972; Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois, Mar. 10–Apr. 16 1972; Chicago Historical Society, Apr. 26–June 24, 1972, cat. 61 (ill.). Organized by Illinois Arts Council.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Two Centuries of Black American Art, Sept. 30–Oct. 21, 1976, cat. 138 (ill.); High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Jan. 8– Feb. 20, 1977; Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas, Mar. 30,–May 15, 1977; The Brooklyn Museum, June 25–Aug. 21, 1977.
Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Marion Perkins, Feb. 19–Apr. 1, 1979, no cat.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, Art in Chicago, 1945–1995, Nov. 16, 1996–Mar. 23, 1997, cat. 16 (ill.).
Chicago, Spertus Museum, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, 2 Feb–5 June 2009; Allentown Art Museum, Sept. 13, 2009–Jan. 10, 2010; Montclair Art Museum, Feb. 6–July 25, 2010 (Chicago only).
The artist, 1950; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1951.
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