ABSTRACT
Eight years after Henry O. Tanner's death, the Philadelphia Art Alliance held an exhibition of his work. Harrison S. Morris, the Managing Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1892 to 1905, delivered the keynote address. While such praise of Tanner's life and work was certainly justified and sincere, Jesse Tanner, soon after his father's passing, began to consider preserving his legacy permanently. With memories still fresh, Jesse decided to write his father's biography. Tanner gained additional national recognition in 1985, when the National Museum of American Art organized traveling exhibition, "Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth-Century America," which opened at Smithsonian Institution. While Tanner's just recognition was slow in coming through mainstream galleries and museums, the African American community, including local activists, black artists of next generation, the black press, and black historians, began to labor shortly after his death to secure his legacy and ensconce his memory well within the annals of black achievement.
