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Home>Stories>Stories of Black Artists in Our Collection

# Stories of Black Artists

See more Black art and artists

To celebrate Black History Month, we’re bringing stories of Black American artists to the forefront. Collectively, their work in our collection explores universal themes of beauty, kinship, and the time-honored tradition of responding to the artists who preceded and inspired them. Discover your new favorite artist here.

The Beauty of Form

Simone Leigh: Acts of Transformation
In sculptor Simone Leigh’s hands, the Black female body is no longer mammy, maid, or muse. Transformed and abstracted, her subjects retain their power. 

Alma Thomas’s Tiptoe Through the Tulips in Living Color

David Drake’s Poetic Pottery Was Resistance

Who is Charles Ethan Porter? 7 Things to Know

Community and Kinship

Out of the Shadows, Lois Mailou Jones Finds Her Place in the Sun
Behind this idyllic landscape lies a hidden story of a Black enclave in Martha's Vineyard — and how the painter had to conceal her identity to make a name for herself.

Quilts That Embody the Legacy of Black AmericaCarrie Mae Weems on the Everyday Experiences of Black Women at the Kitchen Table

Portrait by a Grandson: Motley’s "Portrait of My Grandmother"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Table: Breaking Bread in Troubled Times

Photographs of Everyday Life

Rare Early Photographs of African American Life
A large collection of personal photographs offers a glimpse of Black entrepreneurship and self-expression in the 19th and 20th centuries.

James Van Der Zee’s Retouched Portraits

Washington, DC, through the Scurlock Lens

Ming Smith on Transcendence and Belonging

Past and Present Reckonings

Look to the Light: A Reflection on Aaron Douglas’s “Into Bondage”
A leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas unveiled *Into Bondage*on Juneteenth 1936. It offers a vision of hope and freedom amidst oppression and despair.

Artist Christopher Myers Considers What It Means to “Matter”The Tangled Web of History: Carrie Mae Weems and The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial

Twoness: Rashid Johnson’s Doubled Portrait of Emmett TillEldzier Cortor Takes Us Inside the Slaughterhouse

Artists Respond to Artists

Lindsay Adams on Howardena Pindell

Hanif Abdurraqib on Mwangi Hutter

Jason Reynolds on Gordon Parks

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