Aaron Douglas

This is a study for a larger painting in the collection of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, where Aaron Douglas taught from 1939 to 1966. Rendered in Douglas’s flat, prismatic style, this study honors the labor of people of African descent. In the foreground, figures holding tools seem to reflect on the monuments behind them, built by their ancestors. The children next to a globe at the lower right seem to suggest the possibilities for the next generation. 

Douglas’s work often acknowledges the past while looking toward the future. He explained, “Each new generation can and must look back on, face up to, and learn from the greatness, the weakness, and failures of our past with the firm assurance that . . . such an honest and dutiful approach . . . will continue to carry us on to new and higher levels of achievement.”

–Jan Howard, curator emerita, RISD Museum