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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 14, 1968

FROM: Eleanor Haas
171 West 79th Street
New York, New York 10024
(212) 799-1247

FOR: THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM
2033 Fifth Avenue at 125th Street

BLACKS TALK BACK TO THE WHITNEY MUSEUM

The Whitney Museum left them out. Not a single black artist is included in its current survey of American art of the 1930's. So some of them got together.

They asked Henri Ghent, director of the Brooklyn Museum's Community Gallery, to organize a counter-show, and Harlem's new Studio Museum offered exhibition space and the full support of its staff.

"Invisible Americans: Black Artists of the 30'd" is the result. It opens November 19 at the Studio Museum in Harlem and will run until January 5.

Included are oil paintings, watercolors, prints and sculptures by over 20 of the leading artists of the 30's--among them Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff, Richmond Barthe, Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage. Many are still alive and working today. All have lived with the American tradition of the black artist's invisibility.

"Our title, of course, refers to Ralph Ellison's superb image for the exclusion of blacks from consciousness by the white establishment," said Mr. Ghent, who is also assistant director of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. "They refuse to see us. Small wonder our artists have not been taken seriously."

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