Artists of African Descent

In 1970, as activists around the world demanded civil rights for Black people, Horace Pippin’s Country Doctor (Night Call) (about 1933–39) became the first painting by an African American artist to enter the MFA’s collection. That same year, Edmund Barry Gaither, director of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, curated a landmark exhibition, “Afro‐American Artists: New York and Boston,” which brought fresh attention to artists long underrepresented in encyclopedic museums. However, the MFA’s permanent collections of paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts had few works by Black artists until the 1990s. The inclusive vision of the Art of the Americas Wing has since inspired the acquisition of more than 125 works by artists of African descent, such as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Loïs Mailou Jones, James Richmond Barthé, and Norman Lewis. Our aspiration is to represent artists from across the African diaspora, including Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian artists like Wifredo Lam, Art Smith, and Maria Auxiliadora da Silva. Their importance, so integral to the history of art in the Americas, continues to drive the Museum’s collecting efforts today.