Colorful Visions At African-American Art Exhibit : NPR

Colorful Visions At African-American Art Exhibit : NPR: The African-American experience is reflected, right now, on the walls of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Exuberant dancing in Chicago. Laundry on a line in the nation's capital. A girl smiling out from her father's warm jacket — all captured in photographs, paintings and sculptures from the 1920s through the 1990s.

The show is called "African-American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond." And there is a question: Does it segregate — or at the very least compartmentalize — African-American artists? Yes, says exhibition consultant Renee Ater, an art historian at the University of Maryland. But, she says, it also shows African-Americans involved in visual conversations that have absorbed artists of all races.

"They're concerted with color, they're concerned with line, they're concerned with form, and that's one of the things that you see in the show," Ater says. "And the other thing about this exhibition is that you see African-American faces looking out at you."