Special to the Times
A comprehensive exploration of the work of artist Allan Rohan Crite (1910–2007) will take place with two exhibitions— Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory and Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston— at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Boston Athenaeum, from Oct. 23, 2025 – Jan. 19 and 24, 2026, respectively.
With a career spanning most of the 20th century, during times of immense social and economic changes, Crite devoted himself to depicting the multicultural, multiracial, and multigenerational community of Boston. Crite maintained an intellectually curious and artistically experimental practice ranging from vivid oil paintings documenting the joy of life’s everyday moments to prints and watercolors of spiritual themes rendering the holy figures as Black.
The concurrent exhibitions, each examining different aspects of Crite’s career, are organized by two institutions that held great meaning to Crite— the artist exhibited at the Athenaeum throughout his eight-decade career and he sought inspiration at the Gardner, even incorporating images of the Museum within his works. The Athenaeum and Gardner Museum have also co-published Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood Liturgy, produced by Princeton University Press, the first extensively researched, fully illustrated, career-spanning book about the artist. Scholars, historians, artists and community leaders influenced by Crite have contributed essays and recollections to the publication.
Additionally, most of the works from the Gardner and Athenaeum’s exhibitions will be combined to be featured in Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood, which will be on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey from Feb. 4 – July 31, 2026.
At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory will focus on Crite’s images of the Black and multicultural communities of Boston’s Roxbury and South End neighborhoods where he lived, at a time of urban renewal (or “removal” as Crite described) and gentrification. It will encompass approximately 130 works – oil paintings, watercolors, lithographs, books, collages, and works on paper. On view in the Museum’s Hostetter Gallery, the exhibition includes generous loans from the Boston Athenaeum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Museum of African American History; the Boston Public Library; as well as several private lenders. Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory was co-curated by Diana Seave Greenwald, William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Gardner, and Professor Theodore C. Landsmark, Crite’s friend and collaborator. The Gardner Museum also collaborated with a group of artists and spiritual leaders in Boston who either knew Crite personally or were inspired by him.
A companion exhibition, Visions of Black Madonnas, will simultaneously be on view in the Gardner Museum’s Fenway Gallery. This exhibition of thirteen works juxtaposes the Museum’s recently conserved 16th-century Black Glass Madonna, a work that Crite admired and visited often, with his own depictions of a Black Holy Family. Additionally, a public work of art by Gardner Artist-in-Residence Robert T. Freeman— Allan Crite – American Griot, 2025— has been commissioned by the Museum for its Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade.
The Boston Athenaeum, which houses the largest and most important institutional repository of Crite’s work, will present Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston. This exhibition examines Crite’s role as griot (pronounced “gree-oh”)—a storyteller and knowledge keeper in West African traditions—for Boston’s Black and multicultural communities. It highlights a range of materials from the artist’s long career depicting sacred and secular subjects, including his early Neighborhood Series in both oil and watercolor, drawings, illustrated books, and archival material as well as a special focus on his embrace of the printing press during the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition includes nearly 100 works primarily drawn from the Athenaeum’s extensive permanent collection along with loans from the Addison Gallery of American Art; Boston Public Library; Charlestown Navy Yard (National Park Service); Massachusetts Historical Society; Museum of African American History; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and private collections. Griot of Boston was curated by Christina Michelon, formerly of the Boston Athenaeum, and currently Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with the input of an advisory committee composed of local scholars and friends of the artist. Griot of Boston will be on view in the Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery and extend into the Leventhal Room and throughout the Athenaeum’s first floor.
An accompanying installation of original collages by artist Ekua Holmes, who was also a friend and mentee of Crite, will be on view alongside Griot of Boston. Commissioned for the Athenaeum’s Children’s Library mural, the collages celebrate Black childhood and everyday life, as so much of Crite’s work does.