Harlem Renaissance Art Exhibition by the Harmon Foundation "Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists", 1931 Catalog

Harmon Foundation

Ephemera and pamphlets

[African-American Art][Harlem Renaissance] Harmon Foundation Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists, 1931, a pivotal institutional public recognition of Black visual art during the Harlem Renaissance. Issued for the February 16–28, 1931 exhibition at the Art Center in New York, the catalog represents the final year of the Harmon Foundation’s annual exhibitions, a series that materially shaped national awareness of Black artists during the interwar period. The exhibition set forth to advance the cultural legitimacy of African American artists, largely excluded from mainstream museums and academies.

Harmon Foundation. Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists. New York: Harmon Foundation at the Art Center, 1931. First edition. Staple-bound illustrated wrappers. 47 pages. The front wrapper reproduces Sargent Claude Johnson’s sculpture Chester, a carved wood depiction of a contemplative Black youth, emblematic of Johnson’s synthesis of African sculptural forms and American modernist aesthetics. The catalog contains essays outlining the Foundation’s mission to cultivate African American artistic achievement and its partnerships with historically Black institutions. Reproductions include Laura Wheeler Waring’s Mother and Daughter, presented in soft monochrome, a dignified and intimate representation of Black domestic life. The inclusion of a Kasai dance mask from the Harlem Museum of African Art contextualizes the exhibition within broader diasporic reclamation movements central to the Harlem Renaissance. A printed statement by Ernestine Rose of the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library underscores the importance of preserving “the artistic records of Black life,” reflecting the exhibition’s alignment with Black intellectual and archival advocacy.

Appearing in 1931, as the Great Depression reshaped philanthropic priorities and constrained arts funding, this final annual exhibition catalog marks both culmination and transition in institutional support for African American artists. The Harmon Foundation’s exhibitions created networks of patronage, publicity, and acquisition for Black artists at a time of especially stringent systemic exclusion. The catalog preserves not only individual artworks but also the infrastructure of advocacy that sustained Harlem Renaissance cultural production. Stapled binding delicate and partially separating; moderate edge wear with chips and closed tears to spine and front wrapper; creasing to front panel; faint staining to upper corner; internally clean. Good. An important document of Depression-era philanthropy and the organized promotion of African American art at a defining moment in American exhibition history.

Item #21999

Price: $2,200.00