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Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.
Fred Hampton's Door 2
Dana Chandler, Jr. (American, born in 1941)
1974
Medium/Technique
Acrylic paint on wood
Dimensions
Overall: 203.2 × 121.9 × 59.7 cm (80 × 48 × 23 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
William Francis Warden Fund, The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, and Gallery Instructor 50th Anniversary Fund
Accession Number2020.267
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsContemporary Art, Americas
ClassificationsSculpture
In 1970, the artist and activist Dana Chandler wrote "A Proposal to Eradicate Institutional Racism at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts," a manifesto challenging the MFA (and, by inference, similar institutions) to represent Black artists in their collections and exhibitions, and to support Black self-determination in the arts by financially backing Black-centered arts institutions. Shortly after Chandler's agitations, the MFA mounted the exhibition Afro‐American Artists: New York and Boston. Part of larger fomentations around equity of representation in cultural organizations, it was co-organized by the Museum, The National Center of Afro-American Artists, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and ran from May 19 to June 23, 1970. Equity and representation for Black artists, staff, and other museum stakeholders still remains an urgent and unsolved issue fifty years later. The exchange between Chandler and then-director, Perry T. Rathbone, can be viewed as scanned archival documents here and as a transcription here.
Provenance2020, sold by the artist to the MFA. (Accession Date: October 7, 2020)