ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes modernism in Washington, DC, from ca. 1921 to 1957, investigating the spaces and places where art by African Americans was displayed and as well the agents who propelled it. In his catalogue essay for Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America art historian David Driskell discusses a 1938 watercolor depicting a sartorially sophisticated black man getting his shoes shined by another more modestly dressed figure. Thurlow Evans Tibbs, who was gay like Barnett Aden and James Herring, tapped into queer networks to raise interest in black artists—many associated with a Washington Renaissance. African American artists like Palmer Hayden, Lois Mailou Jones, James Lesesne Wells, and James A. Porter looked backwards and forwards when creating modern representations. Barnett Aden’s “domestic modernism” parallels the aesthetics of presentation of the Phillips Collection, which for much of its early history retained furniture and architectural detailing in the gallery spaces.
