Renaissance, Race, and Representation in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art

"We turn therefore, in the other direction to the elements of truest social portraiture and discover in the artistic self-expression of the Negro today, a new figure on the national canvas and a new force in the foreground of affairs." – Alain Locke, The New Negro: An Interpretation, 1925

Renaissance, Race and Representation in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art coincides with the recent renaming of the Cooper Gallery in honor of Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954). The first African American to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1918, and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, Locke was the architect of the Harlem Renaissance and a leading figure in the recognition of the arts of Africa and its diasporic lineages in the United States and the Americas.

In 1987, Dr. Harmon Kelley (1945-2023) and his wife, Harriet, visited the “Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800-1950” exhibition curated by renowned artist and art historian David Driskell (1931-2020). This transformative encounter led to a life-long quest to collect and share the rich traditions of African American visual art. The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, has been presented widely over the last decade including most recently at the Fresno Art Museum and the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

As the Kelley family has sought to acquire the work of artists such as Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Elizabeth Catlett, they have developed a vast collection that reads like a "who's who" of landmark works that includes paintings, etchings, lithographs, watercolors, block prints, silkscreens, and drawings. In this year marking the centennial anniversary of the publication of “Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro” - the path-breaking special issue of the social science journal Survey Graphic in which Locke outlines his vision for Afro-modernist aesthetics, this exhibition draws on the stewardship of the Kelley family, the robust history of the Harlem Renaissance as well as selected works by Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Charles White, John Wilson, Lois Mailou Jones and Emma Amos from the Hutchins Center’s permanent collection.