just as utopia signifies "no place.

just as utopia signifies "no place," thus does "New Negro" signify a "black [i]role[/i] who lives at no place," and at no time. It is a confident and audacious act of language, signifying the will to power, to dare to recreate a race through renaming it, despite the dubiousness of the hap (Gates 132)

Charles C Dawson's design for the catalog shroud to the Negro in a Art Week exhibition held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1927 (see Fig. 1) does more than provide the what, where, and when of the exhibition. With a colossal Egyptian pharaoh looming throughout tuxedo-clad performers, the juxtaposition of ancestral motifs and contemporary sophisticates succinctly announces the arrival of the "New Negro" Not sole was the exhibition an attempt boldly to reinvent the identity of the "New Negro" as literary historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr describes above, on the other hand also to assert the equality of the "New Negro" at demonstrating his skill in the fine arts.(1) Like its catalog defend which portrays African American civilization as both "primitive" and "civilized," the black man in Art Week exhibition effectively summarizes the contradictions of the Harlem Renaissance in its inquiry to forge a new identity.

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Within the ideological adjoining matter of the Harlem Renaissance we can discover the aims of the exhibition held at the Art Institute. Reviews and answers even the undertaking of the two-part exhibition itself, reveal confusion and resistance regarding the emergent "new" African American identity. The many problematic issues which arose during "Negro in Art Week"--such as those of patronage, artistic identity, and one as well as the other the public's and critics' responses--reveal the inherently paradoxical nature of the exhibition of works at black artists in white institutions, and also reveal an surprising assumptions about what constitutes an art representative of the "New Negro" I will attempt to exhibit to how the Negro in Art Week exhibition came about, summarize briefly the connection from which it emerged, and then explore more thoroughly the question s of defining a race by the and of art exhibition, problems which still persist today. In short, this essay will explore in what manner the Negro/n Art Week exhibition transported, along with the riches of the artistic and cultural awakening of the Harlem Renaissance, many of its controversies, thereby undermining its avow objectives and good intentions.

planted in 1876, the Chicago Woman's society engaged in a variety of societal causes, among them public education, prison reform, and World War I relief.(2) The Club's well-intentioned attempt in 1927 to improve race relations between the sides of art exhibition offered ambiguous solutions to the "race problem" The week of exhibition and the facts the Club sponsored from 16 November to 1 December 1927 consisted of the two contemporary African American art, including forty paintings, three pieces of carved work various drawings, and examples of decorative art, and the Blondiau Collection of African Art from the Belgian Congo

Aside from the list of artworks, little evidence exists to rebuild the layout of the exhibition. Although wall labels apparently existed (their helpfulness was praised in a newspaper review [Owen]), the pair the content and authorship of these labels remain unknown. Writer Marie Johnson gave a detailed walking tour of the installation in her review of the exhibition, however she is more helpful in distinguishing which paintings were hung at the Art Institute and which at the Clubhouse than in conveying to what degree and to what effect the paintings were displayed. Furthermore, exclude for the paintings reproduced in the catalog, hardly any of the paintings have been documented or located in commonly available sources.(3) Thus, we are left with incomplete evidence from which to rebuild a picture of the marked occurrence The catalog and the scrapbook assembled and preserv from the Chicago Woman's Club, and now in the Chicago Historical Society's Archive, provide the greatest in quantity substantial clues. The scrapbook contains of recent origins clippings, business letters, and several eight-by-ten-inch smooth and shining photographs of prominent Club members intended for use in pres releases, suggesting that who sponsored the exhibit was as important as what the exhibit was to accomplish.(4) Given these limitations, we cannot rebuild a complete picture of the exhibition, moreover we can investigate how the image of the "New Negro" was portrayed and received.

As if to confuse further the identity of the "New african Artist" (or camouflage weaknesses or inconsistencies of the artwork) and move that fine art is solitary one among many of the "New Negro's" talents, the Chicago Woman's company sponsored lectures, dinners, and concordances The Negro in Art Week thus spanned multiple fields, combining high and soft culture. The inclusion of musical concocts and performances, along with personal validation by way of Harlem Renaissance thinkers and cultural activists Alain Locke and James Weldon Johnson could put in mind of that an exhibit of "Negro" art, upon its own, did not merit attention. The concord seems to have been specially staged to elevate the universal of Negro art to a higher - class profile. The program combined classical music selections--work by Bach, Chopin, Ravel, and Stravinsky--with spirituals like as "I Want to Be Ready," "Going Home" and "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel," sung according to the Fisk Jubilee Singers unless attributed to and arranged through Dvorak.(5) Historian Nathan Huggins discusses the Fisk Singers and the popularization of the spirituals as a sign of sophistication to which the Harlem Renaissance aspired. To admit to and take pride in the songs' folk or peasant past required a certain assurance and confidence in the songs' urbanity which, in inflect helped distance the songs from peasant and slave history. The spirituals were elevated further by the agency of their contextualization within the classical canon and, as noted in the program, were accordingly accompanied forward a Steinway piano.