Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston

“All my work is designed—I’m telling a story. As a matter of fact, the old African tradition— what they call a griot: storyteller. That’s what I’ve been doing all of my life in all my drawings. I’m a storyteller.” —Allan Rohan Crite, 1977 (oral history interview, Archives of American Art)

Allan Rohan Crite (1910–2007) continuously recorded the people and places of Boston in his art and writing. A resident of the South End and Lower Roxbury, Crite dedicated much of his career to documenting the Black community there and in nearby neighborhoods. Alongside his representations of everyday life in the city, Crite also incorporated religious themes, blurring the boundaries between the secular and the sacred.

This exhibition was developed in partnership with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and is accompanied by a companion exhibition "Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory."