The Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) protested a 1969 exhibition at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

entitled ''Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968'' (18 January to 6 April 1969). The protest resulted from conflicts between the Met and the

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

art community after the Met's decision to exclude Black artists and the Harlem community from an exhibit about Harlem, as well as from racism and anti-Semitism within both the exhibition and exhibition catalogue.

Background

''Harlem on My Mind''

Met curator and director

Thomas Hoving Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving (January 15, 1931 – December 10, 2009) was an American museum executive and consultant and the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Early life He was born in New York City to Walter Hoving, the head of Ti ...

had planned a three-month long multimedia exhibition called ''Harlem on My Mind'' intended to highlight the history of Harlem since 1900. The exhibition consisted of floor-to-ceiling introductory photomurals, and then photographs of various sizes depicting life in Harlem, but no artwork by Black artists. The accompanying catalog included a term paper written by Harlem resident and recent graduate of

Theodore Roosevelt High School (New York City) Theodore Roosevelt High School, originally Roosevelt High School, the third public high school to open in the Bronx, New York, operated from 1918 until its permanent closure in 2006. Shutting down incrementally since 2002, this large high schoo ...

Candice Van Ellison containing copious anti-semitic and anti-Irish slurs, and was subsequently pulled from publication by Hoving. Portions of the essay can be found quoted within

Bridget R. Cooks Bridget R. Cooks is an American scholar, writer, curator, and academic. She is a professor who holds a joint appointment in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. Ed ...

' 2011 work ''Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum'' (University of Massachusetts Press).

Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC)

The BECC was organized in January 1969 by a group of 75 African American artists in direct response to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Harlem on My Mind" exhibit. The co-chairmen at the time of creation were

Benny Andrews Benny Andrews (November 13, 1930 – November 10, 2006) was an African-American artist, activist and educator. Born in Plainview, Georgia, Andrews earned a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958, and soon after m ...

Henri Ghent Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry. People with this given name ; French noblemen :'' See the 'List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.'' * Henri I de Montm ...

, and Edward Taylor.

Defacement

On January 16, 1969, ten paintings were defaced in response to the ''Harlem on My Mind'' exhibit. Small "H's" (as large as five inches tall) were scratched mostly into varnish covering the paintings, but in one case, into the actual pigments. None went through the canvases, and all paintings were successfully repaired. The vandal(s) weren't caught, and BECC denounced the vandalism.

List of defaced works

* Follower of

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''Christ with a Staff''.
1661 *

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. ''Rest on the Flight into Egypt''. ca. 1512-15 *

François Boucher François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...

.
The Interrupted Sleep
'. 1750 *

Francesco Guardi Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (; 5 October 1712 – 1 January 1793) was an Italian painter, nobleman, and a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of ...

''Piazza San Marco''
Mid- to late 1760s *

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. ''Interior Scene''. 18th century *

Giovanni Paolo Panini Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini (17 June 1691 – 21 October 1765) was an Italian painter and architect who worked in Rome and is primarily known as one of the ''veduta, vedutisti'' ("view painters"). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vi ...

. ''

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''. 1757 *

Giottino Giottino ( fl. 1324 – 1369), also known as Tommaso Fiorentino, was an early Italian painter from Florence. His real name was Maso di Stefano or Tommaso di Stefano. Giottino's father, Maestro Stefano Fiorentino, "Stefano the Florentine", w ...

.
Portrait of a Man
'. 1521 * Follower of

Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered ...

.
The Coronation of the Virgin
'. *

Jacopo Guarana 225px, ''Allegory of the virtues Mocenigo'', 1787 Jacopo Guarana (October 28, 1720 – April 18, 1808) was a Venetian painter of the late Baroque period who was born in Verona. He was active mainly in Venice and its mainland territories. In ...

. ''Crowning with Thorns''. *

Eugène Boudin Eugène Louis Boudin (; 12 July 18248 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summa ...

. Market in Brittany. 19th century

Responses

Official responses

Hoving's press release
in which he responds to "all persons who have been offended", responding to the controversy can be read in full via the

Thomas J. Watson Library The Thomas J. Watson Library is the main research library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and supports the research activities of the museum staff, as well as outside researchers. It is located in the Met's main building, The Met Fifth Avenue. ...

's Digital Archives. Mayor Lindsay, despite being a friend of Hoving's, criticized the Museum for its choices as racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Irish, and anti-Puerto Rican, later threatening to withhold financial support from the Museum if the catalogue were not removed. Hoving included two disclaimers in the catalogue warning of the racism and anti-Semitism within, and

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

(the publisher) included these in bookstore copies, as well as issuing their own apology. State Commissioner of Human Rights Robert Magnum asked that the show be closed "until it reflects a more accurate record of the aspirations, achievements and goals of the black people of New York."

Art criticism

Art critics were divided in their responses. Many argued whether the Museum should even include exhibits of "sociological documentation", and if that should be considered art or not, or where such an exhibit should be included. Then ''The New York Times'' art critic

John Canaday John Edwin Canaday (February 1, 1907 – July 19, 1985) was a leading American art critic, author and art historian. Early life and education John Canaday was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, to Franklin and Agnes F. (Musson) Canaday. His family mov ...

admitted he knew little of Harlem culture, and what he did know had been influenced by common perception of Black culture as being a modernization and extension of "plantation" culture, concluding that he was not qualified to judge a show like "Harlem on My Mind". By March 1969, the exhibit was reported to still be drawing large crowds. Almost 75,000 people visited the show during its opening week, and hundreds of thousands more before it closed later in March. Throughout, picketing continued.

Artists and activists

Artist, writer, and activist

Sabra Moore Sabra Moore (born January 25, 1943) is an American artist, writer, and activist. Her artwork is based on re-interpreting family, social, and natural history through the form of artist's books, sewn and constructed sculptures and paintings, and in ...

was one of the many artists and activists to join demonstrations against the exhibit. Moore wrote a detailed description of one of the demonstrations in front of the Museum during that time.

References

{{Reflist 1969 protests Harlem Metropolitan Museum of Art Vandalized works of art in New York (state) 1969 in art