Harlem Renaissance

For more that two decades, author Emily Bernard has been fascinated by Carl Van Vechten, a white man who played a seminal - and controversial - role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. She was in turns appalled by Vechten's air of entitlement, amused by some of his provocations and moved by his devotion to individual artists. (For instance, Van Vechten lobbied authorities to erect a nude, anatomically correct statue in New York's Central Park of the African-American activist James Weldon Johnson.

The Census Bureau announced last week that it is dropping the use of the term "Negro" to describe black Americans in its population surveys. I suspect few will mourn the word's passing. Today Americans of African descent, especially younger ones, almost universally prefer to be called African-American, people of color or simply black. The bureau reports that the number of blacks who self-identify as Negroes has dwindled to fewer than 50,000, most of them older people living in the South.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, whose large and varied body of work, including landscapes, portraits and atmospheric images of religious subjects, made him the first African-American artist to win an international reputation, inspired a generation of black artists to pursue professional careers. But the artists who took up Tanner's mantle did not necessarily adopt the master's painting style or his ideas about the artist's role in society. They were products of a new century, with a new outlook oriented toward modernity and the unprecedented social conditions it had created.

For more that two decades, author Emily Bernard has been fascinated by Carl Van Vechten, a white man who played a seminal - and controversial - role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. She was in turns appalled by Vechten's air of entitlement, amused by some of his provocations and moved by his devotion to individual artists. (For instance, Van Vechten lobbied authorities to erect a nude, anatomically correct statue in New York's Central Park of the African-American activist James Weldon Johnson.

"Harlem is vicious modernism," writes poet Amiri Baraka. "Can you stand such beauty, so violent and transforming?" Northern Manhattan was a hub of transformation in the early 20th century as thousands of African-Americans left the rural south and migrated to northern cities where the industrial economy, jogged by the Great War, had heated up. The black intelligentsia was on the move as well, and as America entered the 1920s, many of its most eloquent and...

This month, two relatively new galleries in Baltimore are presenting works by African-American artists that recall the cultural ferment of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. At Sassafras in Waverly, gallery owner Linda Richardson has mounted The Spirit World, a show of paintings and quilts by Washington-area artist Gwendolyn Aqui. In Charles Village, the newly opened Saint Paul Street Art and Design Gallery is offering works by three local artists: sculptor William Rhodes, painter Michael A. Thomas and Archie Veale, whose impassioned charcoal drawings chronicle the artist's search for the eternal.

A respected doctor, a Harlem showgirl, a prim social worker and a flamboyant costume designer make an unlikely foursome. But in Pearl Cleage's "Blues for an Alabama Sky," they're more than that - they're a surrogate family. Receiving a skillful local premiere at Everyman Theatre, "Blues" is the second Cleage play about a makeshift family set against a historic backdrop that's been staged recently in Baltimore. ("Flyin' West," Cleage's play about a 19th-century all-black pioneer town, was produced this winter by Arena Players.

1917: First jazz recordings1918: Mencken's "In Defense of Women"1920s: Harlem Renaissance; the Cotton Club is born

Helene Johnson, 89, whose poetry about the life of blacks in America contributed to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s, died Friday in New York. In an essay published in 1972, Ronald Primeau wrote that Ms. Johnson helped establish the Harlem Renaissance's "validity as a movement."Sir James Cameron Tudor, 75, a former deputy prime minister in Barbados, died Sunday after a heart attack in Bridgetown.

In the 1920s, Harlem on New York's Upper West Side was the "Negro Capital of the World." The migration of hundreds of thousands of Southern rural blacks to Northern cities in the first decades of the century had made Harlem the largest black community in the nation.In the Roaring '20s it was the scene of an incredible outpouring of artistic, literary and musical creativity that would be remembered as the Harlem Renaissance.Black writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston and Countee Cullen produced plays, poems and novels celebrating the "New Negro" who was emerging in the city - urbane, politically aware and relentlessly modern.

The poet Langston Hughes called Harlem the "Negro Capital of the World," and in the 1950s, when I was growing up there, it really was. The great northern migration of Southern blacks that began near the turn of the last century had made Harlem the largest African-American community in the country, and people still looked back with pride to the remarkable flowering of black arts and culture of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance. So I was somewhat nonplused by a recent report that African-Americans no longer constitute a majority in Harlem.

If African-Americans don't buy artworks by African-American artists, who will? A decade ago, that question prompted a group of black collectors in Washington to join together to share their knowledge and experience. They wanted to create a forum where they could discuss African-American art, make group visits to artists' studios and find ways to support local artists, dealers and visual arts programs. The fruits of their efforts are on display this month in Holding Our Own, a lovely exhibition of African-American artworks owned by members of the Collectors Club of Washington at the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, whose large and varied body of work, including landscapes, portraits and atmospheric images of religious subjects, made him the first African-American artist to win an international reputation, inspired a generation of black artists to pursue professional careers. But the artists who took up Tanner's mantle did not necessarily adopt the master's painting style or his ideas about the artist's role in society. They were products of a new century, with a new outlook oriented toward modernity and the unprecedented social conditions it had created.

COMICS RELIEF WHAT / / Free Comic Book Day WHEN / / Saturday WHERE / / A variety of venues that sell comic books, including Comics Kingdom, 3998 Roland Ave.; Shananigans Toy Shop, 5004-B Lawndale Ave.; and Cutting Edge Comics, 2832 Christopher Ave. WHY / / Because comic books will be given away to promote readership. CONTACT / / Visit www.freecomicbook day.com to find the location nearest you. FREE HARLEM RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL The Prince George's County Harlem Renaissance Festival is Saturday.

Pride Festival Movie Dearest, the Baltimore Pride Film Festival, presented by Baltimore Pride and Creative Alliance Wednesday through June 3, packs more diversity into a celebration of gay cinema than most mainstream festivals do into any three-day period. The schedule is international and local, camp-classic and cutting-edge. Before Wednesday's 8 p.m. screening of R.W. Fassbinder's 1982 Querelle (based on Jean Genet's novel about a bisexual sailor-prostitute), you can attend a free reception (6 p.m.-8 p.m.)

If African-Americans don't buy artworks by African-American artists, who will? A decade ago, that question prompted a group of black collectors in Washington to join together to share their knowledge and experience. They wanted to create a forum where they could discuss African-American art, make group visits to artists' studios and find ways to support local artists, dealers and visual arts programs. The fruits of their efforts are on display this month in Holding Our Own, a lovely exhibition of African-American artworks owned by members of the Collectors Club of Washington at the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi.