Langston Hughes

Artist

Underwood & Underwood, active 1880 - c. 1950

Sitter

Langston Hughes, 1 Feb 1902 - 22 May 1967

Exhibition Label

The Harlem Renaissance of the early twentieth century was a misnomer. Harlem had always been the capital of African America, with its own cultural and social traditions. What “Renaissance” actually connoted was whites’ discovery of African America and their grudging admission to allow the most talented blacks to cross the color line and gain a measure of acceptance, if not full social and political equality. Among poets, Langston Hughes was a trailblazer, not only for black writers but also for his ability to force his way into mainstream American literature. Although white intellectuals projected their racial fantasies and preconceptions onto African Americans, seeing them as a way of revitalizing a sterile culture by injecting a dose of the “primitive,” Hughes focused on a deep commitment to African American history, treating the subject with the framework of modernist poetry. As would be the case throughout the century, a marginal or excluded group would reinvigorate the culture because their doubleness—the sense of being “in” but not completely “of” American society—worked to their advantage as artists. Paradoxically, the story of twentieth-century culture was sometimes best told through the eyes of those whom the culture most disdained: women, gays and lesbians, and African Americans.

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of Elizabeth Ann Hylton

1925

Object number

NPG.2011.101

Restrictions & Rights

CC0

Type

Photograph

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image/Sheet: 22.1 x 15.7cm (8 11/16 x 6 3/16")

Mat: 55.9 x 40.6cm (22 x 16")

Place

United States\District of Columbia\Washington

National Portrait Gallery

Topic

Costume\Headgear\Hat

Langston Hughes: Male

Langston Hughes: Literature\Writer\Poet

Langston Hughes: Literature\Writer\Librettist

Langston Hughes: Communications\Journalist\Columnist

Langston Hughes: Literature\Writer\Novelist

Langston Hughes: Communications\Translator

Langston Hughes: Literature\Writer\Playwright

Portrait

Record ID

npg_NPG.2011.101

Usage of Metadata (Object Detail Text)

CC0

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/sm441790778-a204-4127-810e-abcfa7da3120