Winner of the James A. Porter and David C. Driskell Book Award for
African American Art History, I Too Sing America offers a major survey
on the visual art and material culture of the groundbreaking movement
one hundred years after the Harlem Renaissance emerged as a creative
force at the close of World War I.
It illuminates multiple facets of the era--the lives of its people, the
art, the literature, the music, and the social history--through
paintings, prints, photography, sculpture, and contemporary documents
and ephemera. The lushly illustrated chronicle includes work by
cherished artists such as Romare Bearden, Allan Rohan Crite, Palmer
Hayden, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and James Van
Der Zee.
The project is the culmination of decades of reflection, research, and
scholarship by Wil Haygood, acclaimed biographer and preeminent
historian on Harlem and its cultural roots. In thematic chapters, the
author captures the range and breadth of the Harlem Reniassance, a
sweeping movement which saw an astonishing array of black writers and
artists and musicians gather over a period of a few intense years,
expanding far beyond its roots in Harlem to unleashing a myriad of
talents upon the nation. The book is published in conjunction with a
major exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art.
