In 1962, a Philadelphia artist named Paul Keene completed a large abstract painting that he called The Barrier.
On the surface, the painting closely resembled other works of the then-fashionable New York school of abstract expressionism: non-representational imagery painted in a muscular, "all-over" style that emphasized the physical act of putting pigments on canvas.
But Keene was an African-American painter, and almost hidden within his seemingly abstract design was another powerful image: that of black protesters being pummeled by water cannons at the height of the civil rights struggle in Birmingham, Ala.
When James E. Lewis, then chairman of the art department at Morgan State University, saw the work later that year, he immediately recognized its significance as an example of both advanced American painting and of politically engaged African-American art. Despite limited funds, Lewis decided to purchase the work as a teaching tool for his students.
The Barrier thus became part of a collection that eventually would grow to more than 4,000 objects by artists from all over the world.
Tomorrow, The Barrier again will be on display when the new museum named after Lewis opens its doors to the public on the campus of Morgan State University. Located in the Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center, which was completed last year, the James E. Lewis Museum's first show presents more than 200 artworks from the 16th century to the present, including European and American painting, African sculpture, installation, prints, drawing and photography.
The museum and the collection it houses are a tribute to Lewis' vision as a pioneering arts educator among the nation's historically black colleges and universities
The artwork that Lewis collected for the school, almost all of them made possible by gifts from individuals and institutions, have helped educate generations of Morgan fine arts graduates. "The mission of the museum from the beginning has been to provide for the cultural enrichment of our students," said Gabriel S. Tenabe, the director of the museum and head of the fine arts department. "This was Lewis' dream, and over the years we have been very successful in building on what he started."
The museum's holdings range from 17th-century Dutch genre scenes to works by Romantic, Impressionist and Modern masters. They include works by Thomas Cole, John Constable, Jean Corot, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and Salvador Dali as well as examples of such Harlem Renaissance artists as Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden and Elizabeth Catlett.
"Lewis had embarked on a lifelong endeavor to put together a collection from a multicultural perspective," said curator A.M Weaver. "So the show is really held together by his pluralist aesthetic."
The inaugural show, titled Convergence, highlights the close relationship between European modernism and the emergence of a politically engaged group of African-American artists during the first half of the 20th century who set out to redefine the terms of black identity in America.
Many of these artists had studied in Europe and returned to the United States determined to apply what they had learned to the depiction of African-American life. In doing so, they hoped to counter the negative, stereotypical images of blacks found in the works of white American artists.
In looking to European modernism for models, African-American artists could select from a variety of approaches and styles.
Some, like painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), who spent much of his career in France and who is represented in this show by a landscape and an allegorical genre scene, produced traditional realistic images in a late Impressionist style reminiscent of Cassatt.
Hale Woodruff (1900-1980), who studied in Paris a generation after Tanner, also embraced post-Impressionism initially but later switched to a spare modernist style that proved particularly effective in the series of black-and-white linoleum-cut prints of rural Southern life which he executed in the 1930s and '40s. Two of Woodruff's Depression-era prints are in the current show.
In the late 1940s, Jacob Lawrence invented a supple, highly personal modernist visual language that combined aspects of both European abstraction and American folk art.
Lawrence fashioned these striking forms into extended pictorial narratives that explored key figures and events in African-American history, such as the lives of Harriet Tubman, Toussaint L'Overture and John Brown and the great migration of blacks from the South to the North that followed World War I.
Cubism, whose principles were first worked out by Picasso and Braque in the first decade of the 20th century, had an enormous influence on African-American artists in their efforts to recast the image of black life.
Picasso's use of motifs derived from traditional African sculpture, in particular, kindled a new interest in the plastic qualities of African art that African-American painters and sculptors were quick to exploit.
Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, Elizabeth Catlett and many others found novel ways of incorporating the forms of African masks and sculpture into their own work.
The influence of African sculpture on modernism also prompted efforts to collect African art for its unique aesthetic qualities. The Lewis museum houses an extensive collection of African masks, sculpture and ceremonial objects that occupy pride of place in the current installation.
Among the more than 100 African objects in the show are a Dan mask from Ivory Coast, a striking, late 19th-century antelope mask from Burkina Faso and early 20th-century vessels, figures, utensils and ceremonial objects from Nigeria, Ghana and West Africa.
The show also includes works by Maryland artists Herman Maril, Joyce Scott and Elizabeth Talbot Scott, David Driskell and others, as well as photographs by Gordon Parks, Roland Freeman, Carl Clark and Linda Day Clark.
This is a lovely and important exhibition that promises to open a new chapter in the understanding and appreciation of African and African-American art in Baltimore and the historical circumstances that brought it into being.
The museum is at 2100 Argonne Drive. Hours are Tuesday through Friday 1 a.m. to 4 p.m., weekends by appointment. Admission is free. Call 443-885-3030.