The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art

The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art: Works on Paper

This exhibition presents major names in the history of art including Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Margaret Burroughs, Elizabeth Catlett, Robert Colescott, Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and other outstanding African American artists from the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of San Antonio, Texas. The late art historian David Driskell, Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, called the Kelley Collection “one of the finest that has been assembled tracing the history of African American art.”

Thematically, the exhibition is largely one about people, with only a rare landscape or abstraction. African American artists have historically focused on the experience of being Black in America, whether expressing the joys of daily life or the perils of inequity. The exhibition includes drawings, watercolors, pastels, acrylics, gouaches, and a wide variety of printmaking techniques including etching, lithography, and screen printing.

The exhibition was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions of Los Angeles, CA.