Dox Thrash and the “Poetry of the Artist’s Own People”

A son of sharecroppers, Dox Thrash was born in 1893 and raised in a cabin outside the town of Griffin in rural Georgia. The second of four children, he was raised primarily, perhaps solely, by his beloved mother, Ophelia. Throughout her adult life, Ophelia Thrash worked six to seven days a week as a housekeeper and cook for a white family named Taylor while providing materially and spiritually...
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The Resurrection of Henry Ossawa Tanner

The annals of American art are crowded with artists who achieved renown in their life­times, but whose reputations – for a variety of reasons – faded after their demise. No story is more poignant than that of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), a gifted African American painter who grew up in Philadelphia, but, to escape painful discrimination, pursued his career in France. Henry Ossawa...
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Preserving The Past, Protecting The Future: The State Museum Of Pennsylvania

Part of a museum’s mission is to collect, safeguard, exhibit, and interpret relevant objects and artifacts, and The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg fulfills this goal with singular distinction. Since 1905, the institution has preserved vast collections that chronicle the Commonwealth’s history and natural heritage from earth’s beginning to the present (see...
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