The Anacostia Community Museum will be closed from January 8, 2024-March 22, 2024. We will reopen on Saturday, March 23, 2024 with our next exhibition, A Bold and Beautiful Vision: A Century of Black Arts Education in Washington, DC,1900-2000. We hope you will join us! 

Crowd Watching Marian Anderson

Object Details

Artist
James Amos Porter
Date
mid 20th Century
Medium
graphite, watercolor, ink, gouache on paper
Dimensions
14 × 10 15/16 in. (35.5 × 27.8 cm)
Caption
This watercolor commemorates singer Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, after she was refused a venue at Constitutional Hall due to its segregationist policies.
James A. Porter depicts this seminal moment in the burgeoning civil rights movement by focusing on the audience. Anderson stands in the background of the watercolor; her only identifiable feature is her fur coat. The foreground shows the backs of a colorful, multiracial crowd gathered at the steps of the monument. The absence of faces in the painting—even Lincoln’s is hidden behind a column—focuses attention on the importance of the collective, rather than any one individual. A small thumbnail sketch on the right may have been the initial composition of the scene. According to the artist’s daughter, his wife was on the organizing committee for Anderson’s concert, so he may have felt a personal connection to this event.
Accession Number
2001.0003.0009
Type
watercolor
See more items in
Anacostia Community Museum Collection
Data Source
Anacostia Community Museum
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
GUID
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/dl893b42250-24ca-497c-852a-efca76d5c3f3
Record ID
acm_2001.0003.0009
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