This exhibitions includes approximately 75 works by more than 50 artists. It will begin with rare examples of fine and decorative arts made by free and enslaved artists prior to the Civil War, including silhouettes made after 1802 by Moses Williams, who worked in Philadelphia at the museum of Charles Willson Peale, and a massive storage jar with a Bible verse finely inscribed across the lip by the South Carolina potter David Drake.

Also included will be Henry Ossawa Tanner’s landmark painting The Annunciation, which entered the Museum’s collection in 1899, the first work by an African American artist to be acquired by an American museum.

10 January – 5 April 2015 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art 

Shown here:

The Annunciation, 1898, Henry Ossawa Tanner, American (active France), 1859–1937
Oil on canvas, 57 x 71 1/4 inches (144.8 x 181 cm), Framed: 73 3/4 x 87 1/4 inches (187.3 x 221.6 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1899.

Smoking My Pipe, 1934, by Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr.
Public Works of Art Project, on long-term loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration

no world, 2010, from the series An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters, by Kara Walker
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the Marion Stroud Fund for Contemporary Art on Paper, 2010-142-1
© 2014 Kara Walker