Two Centuries of Black American Art

Two Centuries of Black American Art was a 1976 traveling exhibition of African-American art organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It "received greater visibility and validation from the mainstream art world than any other group exhibition of work by Black artists." According to the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, the "landmark" exhibition "drew widespread public attention to the contributions to African American artists to American visual culture."

LACMA has organized three exhibitions of work by African Americans: Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, Timothy Washington (1971), Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists (1972), and Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976). The Black Arts Council was a driving force behind all three shows. Founded by Cecil Fergerson and Claude Booker (black art preparators who worked at LACMA), the organization comprised African-American artists, staff members, and other city residents who aimed to promote African-American art in Los Angeles. When the Black Arts Council was founded in 1968, every LACMA board member was white.

Following Panorama, the Black Arts Council lobbied LACMA to hold an exhibition of African-American art in its main galleries; Panorama had been held in the basement Art Rental Gallery. After years of pressure, LACMA's deputy director asked David Driskell (then the chair of Fisk University's art department) if he would be interested in guest-curating a survey of African-American art, and requested that he make a formal proposal to LACMA's Board of Trustees.

LACMA's reception of Driskell's June 1974 proposal was decidedly mixed. LACMA's chief curator of modern and contemporary art, Maurice Tuchman, refused to attend the presentation. Fergerson, Tuchman's curatorial assistant at the time, was not invited to the presentation; he later commented that this was likely because he was deemed too radical and "too Black". Board members Franklin Murphy, Sidney F. Brody, Charles Z. Wilson, Jr., and Robert Wilson, however, supported the exhibition, and their opinion prevailed. Donelson Hoopes (curator of American art) and Ruth Bowman (LACMA's director of education) both resigned in response to the board's decision to hold the exhibition.

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