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Explore

  • African American Music
  • Roots
  • Jazz and Blues
  • Achievements and Impact
  • Resistance and Politics
  • Connecting Through Music
  • Paintings of African American Musicians
  • Photographs
  • Instruments
  • NMAAHC Collections
  • Credits and Additional Materials

Paintings Featuring African American Musicians

Historically, people in the African Diaspora were treated by European painters as props or scenery rather than as subjects, so portraits of African American musicians, much like other markers of status that were long denied to people of color in European-controlled territories, serve as a cultural acknowledgment of their personhood, skill, and value as artists.  

  • Marian Anderson #1

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Painting of Duke Ellington

    National Museum of American History
  • Remembering Ummah

    National Museum of African American History and Culture
  • Celebration

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Fab 5 Freddy

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Junior Wells

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Hot Chocolates

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Harry Thacker Burleigh

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Aretha: Mysterious Lady of Sorrows

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Le Tumulte Noir/Jazz Band

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Lena Horne

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Marian Anderson

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Louie Armstrong

    Catalog of American Portraits
  • Le Tumulte Noir/Josephine Baker in Palm Skirt

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Jazz

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Marian Anderson

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Michael Jackson

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Folk Scene--Man with Banjo

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Sweet Adeline

    Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Hommage à Bessie Smith

    National Museum of African Art
  • Roland Hayes

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Duke Ellington

    National Portrait Gallery
  • The Musicale, Barber Shop, Trenton Falls, New York, (painting)

    Art Inventories Catalog, Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Leontyne Price

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Banjo Player, (painting)

    Art Inventories Catalog, Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Ornette Coleman

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Lionel Hampton

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Dizzy Gillespie

    National Portrait Gallery
  • Miles Davis

    Catalog of American Portraits
  • Thelonious Monk

    National Portrait Gallery
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