Guy McElroy

Guy Clinton McElroy (1946-May 31, 1990) born in Fairmont, West Virginia was an African American Art Historian. He curated the major exhibit "Facing History: The Black Image in American Art 1710-1940" which dealt with the image of African-Americans in American art.

Guy C. McElroy was the son of Geraldine (née Woods) and George E. McElroy, Sr. Raised in his native Fairmont, West Virginia McElroy earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from local Fairmont State College in 1970. After he earned a master's degree in art history from the University of Cincinnati in 1972, he acquired a second Master's in Mass Communications from Boston's Emerson College in 1975.

He held the position of Rockefeller Fellow in Museum Studies at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from 1974 to 1975. He followed that position with several assistant curator roles in West and East Coast public galleries and museums. Beginning in 1978 McElroy spent 10 years at Washington, DC's Bethune Museum-Archive, first as curator and then as assistant director. It was as adjunct curator of the Corcoran Gallery where he completed his work on "Facing History."

Becoming a quadriplegic after a 1987 New Mexico automobile accident, McElroy began using a wheelchair.

He died at 44, only five months after initial publication of the catalog for "Facing History," from a pulmonary embolism at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC having nearly completed a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Maryland.

"Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940," was the first public display by a major museum to showcase depictions of African-Americans in American art. The show examined ways in which American artists "reinforced a number of largely restrictive stereotypes of black identity." The art exhibition originally shown from January 13 through March 25, 1990 at the Corcoran Gallery travelled to the Brooklyn Museum from April 20 through June 25, 1990.

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