Two Centuries of Black American Art

[1] It "received greater visibility and validation from the mainstream art world than any other group exhibition of work by Black artists.

LACMA's chief curator of modern and contemporary art, Maurice Tuchman, refused to attend the presentation.

Fergerson, Tuchman's curatorial assistant at the time, was not invited to the presentation; he later commented that this was likely because he was deemed too radical and "too Black".

Donelson Hoopes (curator of American art) and Ruth Bowman (LACMA's director of education) both resigned in response to the board's decision to hold the exhibition.

[5] Though covering a broad time period, the exhibition was limited in the number of works it incorporated (as one critic jeered, "Two centuries in five rooms!").

[5] Ebony magazine called the exhibition "an impressive and vastly educational exhibit, running a range of folk, classical, ethnic, universal, realistic and imaginative orientations, tracing the development of Afro-American art from anonymous slave artisans through the traditional academic work of the late 18th and 19th centuries, the dynamic 'Negro Renaissance' of the '20s, and the government-sponsored works of the Great Depression era and the social protestations of the '30s and '40s as well as the diverse offerings of the '50s.