Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Alice Childress
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Neel’s portrait of accomplished actress and playwright Alice Childress (1916–1994) is unusual in that the sitter turns her gaze from the artist and, by extension, the viewer. At once regal and aloof, poised and contemplative, Childress looks out a window, her mind hard at work even if her body is still. Childress sat for Neel the same year the former’s play Florence was published in Masses & Mainstream, a left-wing periodical Neel knew well. Childress’s creative and political life mirrored Neel’s. Not only did they frequent many of the same Marxist organizations, they also supported justice for women, people of color, and the lower and working classes.
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