Harlem Renaissance: Black Artistic Tradition, by Patricia Flynn
Guide Entry to 88.02.02:
My unit emphasizes the Black artistic tradition that grew during the period knows as the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s in New York City. This period of unprecedented Black creative activity followed World War I and the mass migration of many Blacks from the rural South to the urban centers of the North. Issues of cultural identity as well as social and political tension in a segregated culture gave rise to a flowering of the arts. Most well known are the creative efforts of writers, poets, dramatists and musicians; less is known about the painters and sculptors of the Harlem Renaissance. My unit examines the visual arts and artists such as painters Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden and William Johnson, sculptor Metta Warrick Fuller, and printmaker James Lesesne Wells.
(Recommended for Art classes, grades 9-12; and American History classes, grades 9-12)