
In 1938, twenty-year-old Robert McNeill was hired to take photographs for The Negro in Virginia, one of more than a dozen black-oriented history projects launched by the New Deal Federal Writer’s Project in the late 1930s. With a three-and-a-half week deadline and a small amount of film, McNeill had to choose his shots carefully. It was a challenging assignment through which he sought to dispel myths about slavery and focus attention on the contemporary lives of black Virginians.
African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, 2012
African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, 2012
- Title
-
Untitled (Woman on a Bench), from the project The Negro in Virginia
- Artist
- Date
- 1930s
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- sheet: 8 1⁄8 x 10 in. (20.6 x 25.4 cm.)
- Copyright
-
© 1938, Robert McNeill
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase
- Mediums Description
- gelatin silver print
- Classifications
- Keywords
-
- Figure female – elderly
- African-American
- African American
- Object Number
-
1993.72.8
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI