Painting the Global History of Art: Hale Woodruff's The Art of the Negro

Abstract

This paper shows how African American artist Hale Woodruff's 1950–1 mural cycle The Art of the Negro depicts a transcultural art history that embeds the genealogy of modern art within the history of mankind, colonial violence and the politics of liberation. It discusses the specific ways that Woodruff used the murals to negotiate the divergent requirements of abstract expressionism and black historiography on the eve of the civil rights movement in the United States.