Page 9 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – November 2018

Get your weekend game plan in gear with these upcoming Ohio events.
Through Jan. 20
‘I, Too, Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100’ Columbus Museum of Art
616-221-6801 • columbusmuseum.org
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual, social and artistic explosion of African American culture that erupted in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and spread across the cities of the greater Midwest, including Columbus, from 1918 to the 1950s. Organized by the Columbus Museum of Art with guest curator Wil Haygood, the exhibition
“I, Too, Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100” offers a fresh look at the visual art and material culture of this groundbreaking moment in American cultural history, and serves as an anchor in a citywide celebration of the Harlem Renaissance.
“This exhibition has its origins in September 2015, when the Lincoln Theater Association and the King Arts Complex celebrated the release of Wil Haygood’s book, ‘Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America’,” said Columbus Museum of Art Executive Director Nannette V. Maciejunes. “For those of us in the audience, it became clear that much of Wil’s writing has been connected
to the Harlem Renaissance and its continuing legacy. For myself, it became clear that Wil was the perfect person to curate an exhibition exploring the Harlem Renaissance.”
Haygood grew up on the near east side of Columbus in a jazz-filled landscape that was an exuberant legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known as the
Allan Rohan Crite, School’s Out, 1936, Oil on canvas.
author of “The Butler,”
which was turned into
an award-winning movie
featuring, among others,
Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Alan Rickman and Vanessa Redgrave. Haygood has written biographies of Sammy Davis Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson and Thurgood Marshall, among others.
In 1983 he was dispatched by the Boston Globe to write a three-part series on the Harlem Renaissance, which put him in direct contact with many of the artists. In his selections for the exhibition and his writing in the
Jacob Lawrence, The Long Stretch, 1949, Egg tempera on hardboard.
accompanying catalog, he captures the range and breadth of a sweeping movement, which saw the blossoming of a myriad of talents by an astonishing array of black artists, writers and musicians.
Wil Haygood, guest curator, photo courtesy Wil Haygood
Horace Pippin, Self-Portrait, 1941, Oil on canvas board.
Winold Reiss, Harlem Girl, ca. 1925, Pencil, charcoal and pastels on heavy illustration board.
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