1935 New York anti-lynching exhibitions

none The 1935 New York anti-lynching exhibitions were two separate but consecutive art exhibitions held in early 1935 by two different organizations, both in response to a 1934 bill in the United States Congress that dealt with lynching.Wolff 2016 133 The organizations involved were the NAACP and the Artists Union, the latter in conjunction with groups including the John Reed Club, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and the International Labor Defense. Organization and background The first exhibition was an NAACP exhibition entitled An Art Commentary on Lynching and held at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries,Wolff 2016 133–134Apel 2004 84, 86 from February 15 through March 2.Crisis 1935 106 It was covered by the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, which in particular observed the additional publicity that accrued because of a last minute change of venue, a mere four days before the exhibition was due to open.Wolff 2016 133–134 It had been originally planned to be held in the Jacques Seligmann Galleries, but the Galleries pulled out stating to the NAACP that it would be unable to go through with the exhibit because of "political, social, and economic pressure", although Seligmann did not disclose whence this pressure originated.Wolff 2016 133–134Apel 2004 84 More than 3,000 people attended the exhibition.Wolff 2016 133–134 The second exhibition was entitled Struggle for Negro Rights and organized by Artists' Union members in conjunction with the John Reed Club and several Communist groups including the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, the Vanguard Group of Harlem (the Marxist group with Louise Thompson Patterson and Augusta SavageApel 2004 156), and the International Labor Defense.Wolff 2016 133Apel 2004 84 It ran from March 3 through March 16.Langa 1999 12 In part because of the Harlem Renaissance, both exhibitions received support from Harlem artists and intellectuals.Apel 2004 84 They occurred back-to-back in early of 1935, and their joint purpose was to spur people to take up the cause of the Costigan–Wagner Bill in the U.S. Congress, among other anti-lynching legislation, which sought to make it an offense under federal law for law enforcement officers to take no action during the commission of a lynchingWolff 2016 133Apel 2004 84 (as they had, for example, in the lynching of John CarterLewis 1993 168, 169). Walter White, leader of the NAACP, thought the visual arts would be a successful way to attract an audience and get them to support legislation.Langa 1999 11 Politically the two organizations were rivals, and publicly at odds with each other;Apel 2004 83 the Artists' Union advocated legislation that held individuals in lynch mobs responsible, demanding the death penalty, while the Costigan–Wagner Bill was aimed at officials who allowed the violence to take place.Langa 1999 11, 12 The Artists' Union took a more radical political stance than the NAACP, with the latter accusing the former of Communism, and the former accusing the latter of being bourgeois and ineffectual.Apel 2004 83Wolff 2016 133 Description of exhibited material and participating artists Both exhibitions excluded actual photographs of lynchings, focusing rather on drawings, paintings, sculptures, and lithographs; and, out of 39 at the first exhibition and 45 at the second, had 5 artists in common.Wolff 2016 133–134Apel 2004 86 Works included Reginald Marsh's This Is Her First Lynching and George Bellows's The Law Is Too Slow, both used as illustrations in the NAACP exhibition catalogue, and others by John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton; with the NAACP's exhibition tending towards explicit imagery whilst the Artists' Union exhibition tending towards symbolism.Wolff 2016 134Apel 2004 86 In part, the exclusion of photographs was because they were not considered high art; but in other part it was also because photographs of a lynching were viewed by the exhibitors as participant actions and commercial enterprises seeking financial gain from lynchings.Wolff 2016 133–134 The exhibitors saw that latter in particular as not compatible with their goals of political action against lynching.Wolff 2016 134 The five artists represented in both exhibitions were Harry Sternberg, Sam Becker, Aaron Goodelman, José Clemente Orozco, and Isamu Noguchi.Apel 2004 92 The realism of some of the artwork was overwhelming for some visitors to the NAACP exhibition, and was decried as details that people could be spared from by one reviewer.Apel 2004 92 Noguchi's Death was particularly singled out for its grisly realism by reviewers, criticized (for example) for "aesthetic opportunism", and for being "macabre" and "bizarre", by Art News; and in response to this and some overtly racist criticism Noguchi removed it from the NAACP exhibition on the fourth day and instead displayed it at the Artists' Union exhibition.Apel 2004 95–97 Orozco's Negros Colgados (Hanged Negros) lithograph was also displayed at both exhibitions, submitted by his dealer Alma Reed.Apel 2004 97Cullen 2009 145 Other artworks included Sternberg's Southern Holiday,Apel 2004 90 Paul Cadmus's To The Lynching!,Apel 2004 97 three of Curry's works (Manhunt, and The Fugitive in oil and as a lithograph),Apel 2004 100 Benton's A Lynching,Apel 2004 102 E. Simms Campbell's I Passed Along This Way in charcoal,Apel 2004 104Louis Lozowick's Hold the Fort,Langa Helen Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930's New York University of California Press 2004 0-52023155-4 Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 157 Hyman J. Warsager's The Law, and two linocut prints by Hale Woodruff (Giddap! and By Parties Unknown).Apel 2004 105 Cross-reference 30em Sources Crisis 1935 https://books.google.com/books?id=C1gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA106 The Crisis May 2, 2021 An Art Exhibit Against Lynching April 1935 Museums and Photography: Displaying Death Elena Stylianou Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert Taylor & Francis 2016 9781317528975 R.M. Wolff Persons Unknown: lynching photographs in the Museum The Anti-Lynching Exhibitions of 1935 Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob Dora Apel Rutgers University Press 2004 9780813534596 Two Antilynching Art Exhibitions: Politicized Viewpoints, Racial Perspectives, Gendered Constraints Helen Langa American Art 1999 13 1 10–39 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3109305 10.1086/424334 3109305 192126647 subscription Mob Justice in the 'American Congo': 'Judge Lynch' in Arkansas during the Decade after World War I Todd E. Lewis The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 1993 52 2 156–184 40019247 10.2307/40019247 Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis Deborah Cullen Museo del Barrio 2009 9780300158960 Further reading Lynching and Anti-Lynching: Art and Politics in the 1930s Marlene Park The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere 2006 Alejandro Anreus Diana L. Linden Jonathan Weinberg 9780271026916 Pennsylvania State University Press none Vendryes Margaret Rose Hanging on Their Walls: An Art Commentary on Lynching, the Forgotten 1935 Art Exhibition Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century Judith Jackson Fossett Jeffrey A. Tucker New York University Press 1997 153–176 j.ctt9qg40k.15 9780814742280 none expanded Category:Art exhibitions in New York City New York anti-lynching exhibitions Category:NAACP New York anti-lynching exhibitions New York anti-lynching exhibitions Category:Anti-lynching movement Category:1935 in art Category:1930s art exhibitions