Art as Activism: The Harlem Renaissance and Its Legacy

In "The New Negro," Alain Locke asserted that art must discover and reveal the beauty obscured by prejudice and caricature.
The Harlem Renaissance promoted self-expression, dignity, autonomy, and social consciousness, laying the foundation for political organizing in the civil rights movement.
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art extends the movement's focus past 1929 into the mature works of the 1930s and 1940s.

In July of 1917, the NAACP, church, and community leaders organized the Silent Protest Parade in response to lynchings and racial violence across the United States.
10,000 African Americans marched down Fifth Avenue to muffled drums holding placards; women wore white, men wore suits and straw hats, and children participated.
Public processions—including the Silent Protest Parade, the Harlem Hellfighters WWI homecoming parade, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association parades, and marches by the Freemasons and Elks—served as public claims of space and community identity.
Key activism practices established during this era included using churches to gather and strategize, conducting public demonstrations, and leveraging Black political power.

Romare Bearden:
- Raised in Harlem in a home that hosted leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey.
- Studied science and mathematics at Lincoln University, earned a degree in education from NYU, played semi-professional baseball, and trained at the Art Students League.
- Created The Block (1973), a six-panel collage nearly 18 feet long depicting Lenox Avenue between 132nd and 133rd Streets, combining public and private scenes, paper, fabric, string, paint, Cubism, and abstraction.
Augusta Savage:
- Completed Cooper Union's four-year program in three years, studied in Paris, and returned to Harlem in about 1932.
- Co-founded the Harlem Artist Guild with Aaron Douglas to lobby the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for resources, opened an "art garage" mentoring artists such as Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis, and directed the Harlem Community Art Center.
- Created Lift Every Voice and Sing for the 1939 New York World's Fair, a 16-foot plaster sculpture of 12 figures forming a harp inspired by James Weldon Johnson's song; the piece was destroyed after the fair due to a lack of storage and transportation funding.

In 1969, The Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, which omitted works by Black fine artists and utilized photography by James Van Der Zee and Gordon Parks strictly as background design elements.
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism is the first New York City museum exhibition dedicated to Harlem Renaissance artists since 1987.
Contemporary artists, such as Studio Museum in Harlem resident Jordan Casteel, draw directly upon the playbook, confidence, and community networks established by Harlem Renaissance creators.