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Legendary Black Artists

6 artworks from 6 artists across 3 galleries
The tour is ordered to begin from the Michigan Avenue entrance. If you are starting in the Modern Wing, simply do your tour in reverse order.

Explore groundbreaking works by these iconic Black American artists.

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  • A work made of painted plaster.

    Musician and Dancer

    Augusta Savage

    Gallery 263, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    In this dynamic rendering of a musical partnership, Augusta Savage celebrated everyday people in her local community of Harlem. The two sculptures aesthetically respond to one another: the musician twists at the waist, throwing back his shoulders and head and lifting his wind instrument high in the air, while the dancer likewise leans off his vertical axis, his arms bent close to his body, full of kinetic energy.

    "Savage moved to New York in 1921 and studied at the Cooper Union. Two years later she won a scholarship to train in France—an offer later rescinded because she was Black. Savage would later found her own school and lead the Harlem Community Art Center."

  • View from the middle of a train station looking down three different corridors. Tunnels are marked with the names of southern cities to the left, northern to the right. Light-skinned travelers, many in fine dress, head left, while dark-skinned travelers, many encumbered by luggage, head right.

    Train Station

    Walter Ellison

    Gallery 263, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    Born in Georgia, Walter Ellison moved to Chicago in the 1920s, one of more than six million African Americans who left the South for the promise of a better life. After studying at the School of the Art Institute, the artist began exhibiting his paintings depicting scenes of Black Americans during the Great Migration, like this one of a segregated train station.

    "On the left side of this painting, Ellison depicts white travelers, assisted by Black porters, boarding trains to southern vacation destinations. On the right side, Black passengers carrying their own bags head to northern cities in search of work."

  • A colorful wedding scene with a dark-skinned bride in red and a groom in black at center, their backs to the viewer. A minister cloaked in black stands between them, a dense wall of flowers or perhaps a floral pattern behind him. The group is flanked by two figures and panels of geometric stained glass.

    The Wedding

    Jacob Lawrence

    Gallery 263, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    Known for his depictions of Black American life, Jacob Lawrence composed this vibrant marriage scene. Positioning the bride and groom with their backs to us, Lawrence invites us as guests to the couple’s special day. The brightly colored flowers and boldly patterned stained glass give the scene movement and energy, adding to the joyful spirit of the painting.

    "Raised in Harlem, Lawrence studied at various community cultural centers and art workshops where his talent was quickly recognized. His unique style centered on narrative cycles devoted to African American history, leaders, and life."

  • Three figures dark-skinned, elongated figures lie on a bed of patterned quilts, viewed from above, slightly abstracted. The central figure wears no clothing, their back and buttocks visible. A leg juts in at bottom right. To the right of the bed on a wooden floor lie newspapers and a white baby doll.

    The Room No. VI

    Eldzier Cortor

    Gallery 263, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    Eldzier Cortor lived in Chicago and attended the School of the Art Institute. While drawn to abstraction, he felt that it was not an effective tool for conveying serious social and political concerns. In this painting, the artist exposed the impoverished living conditions of many African Americans on Chicago's South Side through a brilliant use of line and color, reinvigorating the idiom of social realism.

    "Here, Cortor emphasized pattern and texture, particularly the shapes and brilliant colors of the bed linens, floorboards, and wallpaper. His deliberately decorative vocabulary recasts the scene’s bleak circumstances into a dynamic, luminous composition."

  • Abstract painting composed of small vertical dabs of multiple shades of blue with a small area of similar strokes of red, orange, and yellow in the upper right.

    Starry Night and the Astronauts

    Alma Thomas

    Gallery 291, second level, Contemporary Galleries

    Alma Thomas was enthralled by astronauts and outer space. This painting, made when she was 81, showcases that fascination through her signature style of short, rhythmic strokes of paint. “Color is life, and light is the mother of color,” she once proclaimed. In 1972, she became the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

    "After decades as a representational painter, Alma Thomas turned to abstraction when she was in her seventies, creating shimmering, mosaic-like fields of color with rhythmic dabs of paint that were often inspired by forms from nature."

  • An oil painting that depicts the head and bare, right arm of a brown-skinned man who appers to emerge from behind an American flag. The flag is turned on its side so that the stripes are vertical, and the stars are on the right. The man grasps one of the stripes of the flag in his fist. In this way, the man seems to be imprisoned by the American flag, and is trying to break free.

    Flag Day

    Benny Andrews

    Gallery 295, second level, Contemporary Galleries

    Andrews grew up in a family of Southern sharecroppers and attended the School of the Art Institute on the GI Bill. In his artworks, he depicted a wide range of scenes that celebrate the lives of ordinary Americans, but all with an eye towards dignity and social change. He painted this intimately scaled, potent painting of a Black man imprisoned by the “bars” of the American flag in 1966, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement.

    "Andrews's experiences of racial discrimination growing up in poverty, serving in the military, and as a Black artist seem to have impacted his notion of American identity in this image of a Black man surrounded by the American flag."

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