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Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture > Exhibitions Rising Above Jim Crow: The Paintings of Johnnie Lee GrayFrom November 19, 2002 through January 3, 2003
A trove of paintings by a previously unheralded, self-taught artist provides the core of this new exhibition, offering a personal vision of the strength and creativity of African Americans during the final decades of segregation. A textile worker and carpenter by trade, Johnnie Lee Gray completed some 150 paintings before his death in 2000, at age fifty-eight. His scenes of field work, church life, night life, civil rights demonstrations, and the changing city evoke the strengths of family and community, the power of the African-American church, and the search by African Americans for a better way of life. Curated by Dr. Gwendolyn H. Everett, an art historian at Howard University, the exhibition encompasses some thirty-five paintings by Gray, as well as archival photographs and videotaped interviews. Rising Above Jim Crow: The Paintings of Johnnie Lee Gray is sponsored by New York Life Insurance Company, which is also the sole corporate underwriter of The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part Thirteen/WNET New York documentary series premiering in October. For more information on Jim Crow history, visit www.jimcrowhistory.org. Sponsored by New York Life Insurance Company. |
