AMNA NAWAZ: At the turn of the last century,
African-Americans from across the country
flooded New York City's Harlem neighborhood,
leading to a cultural explosion of books,
poetry, music and art that is now collectively
known as the Harlem Renaissance.
As special correspondent Jared Bowen from
WGBH in Boston reports, a photography exhibit
now traces the evolution of one of the nation's
most recognized neighborhoods as it continues
to evolve today.
It's part of our series on arts and culture,
Canvas.
JARED BOWEN: The 19-teens saw the start of
the Great Migration, when millions of African-Americans
moved away from the South, many to the North,
and to Harlem, which became an oasis from
oppression, especially for artists.
Stephanie Sparling Williams is the exhibition's
curator.
STEPHANIE SPARLING WILLIAMS, Addison Gallery
of American Art: The art was important then
in creating a new visual lexicon for African-Americans
against histories of dehumanizing and degrading
stereotypes and imagery in the American popular
imagination.
JARED BOWEN: At the Addison Gallery of American
Art, we find representation of nearly 100
years of life in Harlem, mostly in photographs
from the museum's collection.
The show takes us from the 1930s, just after
the Harlem Renaissance, to today.
STEPHANIE SPARLING WILLIAMS: I see vibrance.
I see a people who have been through so much
and were given so little and have made this
out of it, this miraculous -- this place.
A lot of people describe Harlem as a cultural
mecca.
This is where a lot of the socializing happened,
was out on street corners or in front of shops.
JARED BOWEN: The Harlem of the 1930s was a
place reeling from the Great Depression.
And Williams sees in the work of both black
and white photographers a place of fortune
and despair.
STEPHANIE SPARLING WILLIAMS: You see a tension
between Harlem's working class, the unemployed,
and then also Harlem's upper and middle class
citizens, stuck within Harlem, but all trying
to pick up the pieces.
JARED BOWEN: By the 1960s, Harlem had become
a hotbed of protest in America, fueled in
large part by its community of artists, says
Judith Dolkart, the Addison's director.
JUDITH DOLKART, Director, Addison Gallery
of American Art: I always see artists as active
agents in the culture.
So artists have the ability to change the
culture as much as anyone else.
They have a point of view, and they are putting
that point of view out there.
JARED BOWEN: In the 1960s, '70s and '80s,
Harlem's streets were host to civil rights
marches and later black power rallies.
It brought an energy that Williams says courses
through these photographs.
STEPHANIE SPARLING WILLIAMS: I describe it
as a buzz, the sound when you get off the
subway of just people in the streets.
And I think that's captured throughout the
exhibition, not only the built environment
and people, but how both come together to
create the social life of Harlem, the lifeblood
of the neighborhood itself.
JARED BOWEN: Today, Harlem tells a different
story, the result of gentrification.
A way of life is changing, as it always has,
but now so are Harlem's people.
STEPHANIE SPARLING WILLIAMS: It comes into
sharp focus through Dawoud Bey's series Harlem
Redux, which he shot in 2016 when we see the
development, the construction.
We see the different ways in which space is
being claimed by other bodies, particularly
white bodies.
JARED BOWEN: The show ends on an epic piece
by Kehinde Wiley, who created this instantly
famous portrait of President Barack Obama.
The subject, regal and wielding a sword, on
his equally mighty horse, was straight off
125th street in Harlem.
STEPHANIE SPARLING WILLIAMS: It's carrying
along this tradition of self-determined imagery,
but also there's a tension, right, this tension
between the art historical canon, this genre
that African-Americans would never find themselves
in -- the black body was never portrayed in
these heroic paintings that depicted valor
and masculinity and virility often.
But Wiley shows us that black the black figure
is no less powerful, no less masculine.
JARED BOWEN: And, instead, there is glory
in a neighborhood that has long encouraged
that in its residents.
For the "PBS NewsHour" I'm Jared Bowen of
WGBH in Boston.
