Charles Alston

Harlem Renaissance artist Charles Alston has become known as a trailblazing artist who defied conventions and paved the way for greater recognition of African American artists. In 1935, having founded the Harlem Artist's Guild, he became the first African-American supervisor to work for the WPA's Federal Art Project (FAP) in New York. He was the first black instructor at both the Arts Student League and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1959 and 1956 respectively. In 1968, he received a presidential appointment from Lyndon Johnson to the National Council of Culture and the Arts. A year later, he was appointed to the New York City Art Commission. In 1990, Alston's portrait sculpture of Martin Luther King, Jr. became the first image of an African American displayed at the White House.

Alston left an important mark on art history, equally as artist, arts educator and activist who notably served as a central influence on Jacob Lawrence. Refusing to adhere to any stylistic conventions, Alston pursued both figurative and abstract painting simultaneously. After making a name for himself with his portraits and large-scale murals in the 1940s, Alston became known for his socio-politically charged artworks responding to the Civil Rights era that explored themes such as inequality and race relations in the United States. Along with Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff, Alston co-founded the collective Spiral in 1963 for artists "who addressed how Black artists should relate to American society in time of segregation."