Most notably, McElroy curated the major exhibition titled Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940.
At Cincinnati, he wrote a master's thesis on the artist Robert S. Duncanson, supervised by Gabriel P.
Four years later, he became curator at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site and became assistant director from 1982 to 1988.
He continued to work the Brooklyn Museum until 1989 and organized an influential exhibition entitled Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710–1940, which toured in 1990 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.
[5] The New York Public Library holds an archive of McElroy's papers, dating from 1969 until his death.