Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
James Farmer
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Neel painted this commanding picture of civil rights leader James Farmer (1920–1999) the same year he and other members of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) were arrested while staging a protest against segregation and racial violence at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. As Farmer said of the demonstration, "For every piece of bright chrome that is on display, we will show the charred remains of an Alabama church. And for the grand and great steel Unisphere, we’ll submit our bodies . . . as witnesses against the Northern ghetto and Southern brutality." Neel’s portrait of Farmer, his brow furrowed and his body coiled tight, is a study in focus, intensity, and determination. Here Neel makes specifically artistic choices to communicate Farmer’s political idealism.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
