What was the Harlem Renaissance? During the Great Migration, major cities across America proved fertile ground for artists and intellectuals fleeing the Jim Crow South. In this episode we hear about Alain Locke’s famous anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation, which gathered some of the best of fiction, poetry, and essays on the art and literature emerging from these communities. Locke’s anthology demonstrated the diverse approaches to portraying modern Black life that came to characterize the “New Negro”—and embodied some of the highest ideals of the era.

Learn more about The Met's exhibition at metmuseum.org/HarlemRenaissance

Objects featured in this episode:

Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., Self-Portrait, ca. 1941 (43.46.4)

Winold Reiss, Roland Hayes, cover of Survey Graphic, March 1925 (F128.9.N3 H35 1925)

Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction, 1934

Guests:

Denise Murrell, curator of The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism; Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History and professor of African/African American Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; distinguished scholar in the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 2023

Monica L. Miller, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of English and Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University

Bridget R. Cooks, Chancellor’s Fellow and professor of art history and African American studies at the University of California, Irvine

Mary Schmidt Campbell, former president of Spelman College; former executive director and chief curator emerita, The Studio Museum in Harlem

For a transcript of this episode and more information, visit metmuseum.org/HarlemIsEverywhere

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Harlem Is Everywhere is produced by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with Audacy's Pineapple Street Studios. 

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