As part of an effort to provide a diverse cultural experience for Kern County residents, The Bakersfield Museum of Art presents the first major exhibit of Harlem Renaissance art in California.

Guest Curator, Charlotte Sherman of Los Angeles, assembled a stunning display of 40 works of art, paintings and sculpture representing this outpouring of African-American of art which took place in the 1920s and 1930s. Also included in the exhibit are relevant and rare books, essays and documentation of the Harlem Renaissance.  At the core is Aaron Douglas whose association with leading African-American writers established him as the “official artist of the movement.”

The exhibit opens December 11 with a reception at 6 p.m. Museum members are free, non-members are $10. Appetizers and a no-host bar will be available. The exhibition runs through February 15, 2009.

The Harlem Renaissance was more of a birth than a rebirth. With the dawn of the Jazz Age in 1919, there was a flowering of legendary artists, musicians, poets, novelists, dramatists and dancers and an outpouring of creative energy. Issues of cultural identity in a segregated society spawned a flowering of the arts in Harlem, New York City. Social reformers, political activists, public policy and education makers, each with their own reasons for promoting African-American achievements in literature, music, visual  and performing arts, created works that resulted in an unprecedented broad-based focus on African Americans, their art and future vision.  These artists rejected the styles of Europeans and white Americans, instead celebrated their cultural dignity and creativity. The exhibit represents these innovators and those followers who carried on the enlightenment of African-American art in America.

Significant Harlem Renaissance artists include: Palmer Hayden, Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, William H. Johnson, Laura Wheeler Waring, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, James Wells, Edwin Augustus Harleston, Richmond Barthe, James Porter, Carl Van Vechten, Sargent Claude Johnson, William Edouard Scott, Beauford Delaney,  Albert Sterner, and Dox Thrash. Following closely with the exuberance and energy of this period are artists Miguel Covarrubias, Charles White, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, James McMillan, Gordon Parks, Don Freeman and Elizabeth Catlett.

Also opening for exhibition on December 11 are Pasadena-based figurative artist Phil Joanou: Reflections and William Wray: California 99. Wray is a plein air painter from Sierra Madre who uses dark, muddy colors depicting beauty in unusual places.