Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community
- Special Exhibition
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries
Featured Art
About The Exhibition
The graphic arts played a groundbreaking role at Cleveland’s Karamu House, one of the nation’s preeminent Black community art centers. Initially founded as a settlement house in 1915, Karamu House became one of the best-known sites for Black American culture. Although noted today for its theater program, the institution housed a printmaking workshop beginning in the 1930s, where artists and community members alike—including a young Langston Hughes—could experiment with various techniques, playing on printmaking’s fundamental accessibility and democracy. This exploration led to the foundation of Karamu Artists Inc., a group that counted some of the most recognized Black printmakers of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) era—such as Elmer W. Brown, Hughie Lee-Smith, Charles Sallée, and William E. Smith—among its members. While a landmark 1942 traveling exhibition celebrated these printmakers’ expression of collective and personal identity, this exhibition is the first to place Karamu Artists Inc. and its innovative use of the graphic arts within the broader context of American art during the 1930s and ’40s, such as the WPA and the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance.
Karamu Artists Inc. presents more than 50 prints created by the group’s members, including works from the museum’s collection as well as important loans from local and national institutions. It is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, featuring essays by leading scholars of Black American art.
Sponsors
This exhibition is made possible with support from the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund, and Anne T. and Donald F. Palmer.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the John and Jeanette Walton Exhibition Fund, and Margaret and Loyal Wilson. Major annual support is provided by the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm and the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment. Generous annual support is provided by two anonymous donors, Gini and Randy Barbato, Gary and Katy Brahler, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Gail and Bill Calfee, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Joseph and Susan Corsaro, Ron and Cheryl Davis, Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Florence Kahane Goodman, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Robin Heiser, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., the estate of Walter and Jean Kalberer, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, the William S. Lipscomb Fund, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Roy Minoff Family Fund, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Dr. Nicholas and Anne Ogan, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Henry Ott-Hansen, Christine Fae Powell, Michael and Cindy Resch, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, Saundra K. Stemen, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.