1944, Aaron Douglas, Building More Stately Mansions -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the exhibition label: Douglas's vision of African American aspiration broadened during the years of World War II, as manifested in this work commissioned for the International Student Center on the campus of Fisk University in Nashville. As described by the artist, his objective was to spotlight the contributions of exploited Black labor to great civilizations worldwide. He thus resituated African American history in a global context, in which the sphinx of Egypt appears together with the spire of a Western cathedral, the tiers of an Asian Buddhist pagoda, and a building crane extending over American skyscrapers, emblems of modernity meant to connote growth and possibility.
1944, Aaron Douglas, Building More Stately Mansions -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the exhibition label: Douglas's vision of African American aspiration broadened during the years of World War II, as manifested in this work commissioned for the International Student Center on the campus of Fisk University in Nashville. As described by the artist, his objective was to spotlight the contributions of exploited Black labor to great civilizations worldwide. He thus resituated African American history in a global context, in which the sphinx of Egypt appears together with the spire of a Western cathedral, the tiers of an Asian Buddhist pagoda, and a building crane extending over American skyscrapers, emblems of modernity meant to connote growth and possibility.