One positive that has come out of the pandemic is the extension of the exhibition “African American Art in the 20th Century” at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg until Jan. 17. It was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., which drew from its collection.

The 45 works by 34 artists admirably represent the diversity of style that characterized the visual arts in the last century and could stand on that achievement alone. The bonus is that the artists are all African American, which invites a comparison of similarities and differences between the ideas and formal expression of this select group and artists who were more regularly represented in the mainstream art world.

It’s the kind of show where viewers are going to fall in love with favorites, whether the huggable child of William Johnson’s “Li’L Sis” (1944) or the intensity of self-taught Thornton Dial’s mixed media abstract “Top of the Line (Steel” (1992), inspired by the 1992 police beating of Rodney King and subsequent riots, the elegant quietude of Sam Gilliam’s color field painting “Light Fan” (1966), or the fantastical scene of Keith Morrison’s outlier “Zombie Jamboree” (1988). 

“We had these wonderful, wonderful things by African American artists [in the collection], but they were not from the same time period and not in the same location in the building,” Virginia Mecklenburg, exhibition curator and SAAM chief curator, said recently by phone. “I wanted to see if we put them all together their trajectory through time and what the artists’ challenges were.”

The first iteration of the exhibition comprised 100 works and traveled to several venues before closing in the early 20-teens to give the light-sensitive photographs, which made up half the show, a rest in storage. When an additional museum inquired about the exhibition in 2017 Ms. Mecklenburg reconfigured it without the photographs.

The chronological range, she said, is from the 1930s to 1990s, beginning with artists whose works reflect the influence of the Harlem Renaissance. “So much happened in those years [which included] a celebration of Black culture and also an examination of what it meant to be a Black artist at the time.”

Sargent Johnson’s circa 1930-1935 copper sculpture, “Mask,” epitomizes that in his representation of an African American woman that formally incorporates influences of both Western classical and African tribal art. He is quoted in a museum publication as saying that by the 1930s he had committed himself to “producing strictly a Negro art ... aiming to show the natural beauty and dignity ... not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself.” It was the first piece by an African American to enter the SAAM collection, a 1966 gift from the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

A very different rendition of a Black woman is the sensual, elongated figure of Eldzier Cortor’s “Southern Gate,” circa 1942-43. She stares beyond the painting’s frame, past a bird perched on her shoulder, standing against a backdrop of storm clouds, a distant church and a deteriorating gate pillar. Cortor found inspiration in the southern coastal Sea Islands, where African culture was maintained into the 1930s, and the woman — who is nude other than a dainty necklace with a cross suspended from it, three daisies in her natural hair configuration, and a red, white and blue wrap draped around her genitals and thighs — may be allegorical, referencing the dichotomy between the heritage of origin and of slavery.

Ms. Mecklenburg, who met the artist when he was 96, described him as “a lovely, gentle, quiet man.” Regarding “Southern Gate,” she said, “He said what he wanted to say in the piece,” then added, “I may puzzle over that one for the rest of my life.”

In the 1960s artists including Romare Bearden (in the exhibition and creator of the emblematic tile mural in the Gateway Center T-station in Downtown Pittsburgh) formed Spiral, a New York–based collective of African-American artists, in response to the changing American culture and the civil rights movement including the milestone August 1963 March on Washington.

“They debated the idea of ‘racial art’ and whether they had a moral responsibility to create socially relevant work,” an exhibition text explains.

Another Spiral founder and member, Felrath Hines, represented in the show by the gestural “Abstract Landscape” (1964) and hard-edge abstraction “Red Stripe with Green Background” (1986), is a “perfect example” of that, Ms. Mecklenburg said.

He participated in demonstrations and was an activist in his personal life but remained an abstract painter throughout. “Ultimately, he decided that being the best painter he could be was the best thing he could do [professionally for the cause],” she said.

Norman Lewis, who was a singular African American among the first generation of abstract expressionist artists, also adhered to his aesthetic, said Barbara Jones, chief curator at the host Westmoreland. But, she noted, if one looks closely at his “Evening Rendezvous” of 1962 the surface patriotism of the vigorous red, white and blue brushstrokes disassembles into white-hooded Klansmen gathered around bonfires. “He was masking that but yet wants you to know it,” she said. 

(The Westmoreland and Smithsonian commendably retain this painting in the exhibition, encouraging honest, timely dialogue. Their commitment stands in contrast to a similar circumstance at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, museums of fine arts in Boston and Houston, and the Tate Modern, London, which last month postponed a highly anticipated exhibition of seminal American artist Philip Guston’s works, some of which included Klan-hooded figures. Eminent critic and educator Robert Storr called the decision “an abject failure of imagination and nerve.”)

Other art ranges from Hilda Wilkinson Brown’s nostalgic streetscape “Third and Rhode Island” (ca. 1930-1940) to the imaginary space of an installation by Renee Stout (who grew up in Pittsburgh and attended Carnegie Mellon University), “The Colonel’s Cabinet” of 1991-1994, which merges authentic and manufactured components to create a fictional narrative. “The Stranger” (ca. 1957-1958) tucked into a hillside and distanced from the houses behind him, by Hughie Lee-Smith, is reminiscent of the alienated figures of Edward Hopper, while the woman in Whitfield Lovell’s 80 by 51-inch “Echo I,” (1996), which was sketched during an artist-in-residence on the wall of a “Project Row House” in Houston, seems to carry all the memories of past residents within her small frame.

There are more stories, about the artworks and the artists, than we have space for, all the more reason to visit the exhibition. And as venues and artists of all disciplines create immediate response to ongoing socio-cultural events, it’s encouraging to know that our established institutions and their professional staffs continue to study, examine and share the evolving culture we both form and are bound by.

The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, 221 North Main St., Greensburg, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Admission remains free (donations appreciated), but advance registration is required. Pandemic precautions are in place. To learn about those or reserve an entry time visit https://thewestmoreland.org or call 724-837-1500.

M. Thomas: mthomas@post-gazette.com.

First Published: November 12, 2020, 5:32 p.m.