Embracing Diverse Voices: African-American Art in the Collection of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

This exhibition marks and celebrates the KIA’s efforts to build and share a significant body of works by African-American artists of regional and national renown with our community.

Over sixty works of art in a variety of artistic approaches and viewpoints include works by well-known area artists Al Harris, Murphy Darden, James M. Watkins, Maria Scott and James Palmore along with work by pioneering artists Robert Scott Duncanson and Henry Ossawa Tanner and leading 20th century artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Hughie Lee-Smith, and Romare Bearden. Recent acquisitions include wonderful photographs by James Van Der Zee and Ernest C. Withers plus Jacob Lawrence’s entire Legend of John Brown series.