Dayton can still celebrate America’s 250th birthday this summer at the Dayton Art Institute.
Now through Sept. 13, works from the African American painter William H. Johnson will be on display in the museum's Special Exhibition Gallery.
The pieces are being brought to Dayton in an effort to showcase activists, scientists, educators, performers and international leaders who worked to advance freedom, justice and peace.
Jerry Smith, head curator at the Dayton Art Institute, said these visual interpretations of history help connect people to America’s story as they look to the future.
“We hear the stories, but there's something that just when you see an image, it just sinks in," he said. "It's so immediate and impactful.”
The Fighters for Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice exhibit features 28 paintings by the renowned artist who was born in South Carolina.
Johnson ended up leaving the Jim Crow south in in 1901 when he was a teenager, seeking a life of art and expression.
"He went to the National Academy of Design for five years. When he graduated, he had won virtually every award they had available. Then he went to Europe," Smith said. "His style shifted when he went to Europe to really emphasize modernism and this expressionist kind of palette."
Johnson was said to be inspired by artists such as Chaïm Soutine and Vincent van Gogh as he developed his own style. But the militarization of Europe in 1938 brought Johnson and his wife, Holcha Krake back to the U.S. where he began to focus on capturing African Americans.
Twenty eight of the works from this time period are on display now at the DAI, but those are only a fraction of more than 1,300 of his paintings that live at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The paintings were chosen for their powerful depictions of freedom fighters such as Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, Mohandas Gandhi and Harriet Tubman.
"He really painted, between 1944 and 1946, people who have fought for social justice and human rights. Not only African Americans but people globally, primarily looking at African Americans," Smith said.
From this point, Johnson's style shifted. First it depicted flattened figures with unmodulated color which developed into the series now on view at the institute.
Smith said these works really showcase his movement to a "scrapbook-style" approach to storytelling.
“People might think of (it) as ‘intentionally naive style,’ but he's so well-trained," he said. "It's all the elements of color theory and design elements that come to play throughout the images.”
Visitors can also explore these works and more in the second half of the gallery.
Smith said they chose a variety of pieces by African American artists from the local institute’s permanent collection to fill the rest of the nearly 5,000 square foot gallery.
"We have paintings, we have prints, have sculpture," he said. "From high naturalism to folk art."
Smith said the museum decided to pull from their own collection to fill the extra space with recognizable works that bring a new perspective to the artists behind them.
“The African-American artists are being separated here, they're shown as a group," he said."But it's a way of saying, but they shouldn't be because they've always been part of the story. They've always been part of American art.”
Admission to the William H. Johnson Picturing Justice exhibit is included in the museum's general admission cost. Tickets range from $5 to $15 depending on age and student status.
All children ages six and younger can visit for free, as well as museum members.
