{"id":14634,"date":"2011-06-30T21:56:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T21:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14634"},"modified":"2017-03-06T03:24:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T03:24:14","slug":"henry-ossawa-tanner%e2%80%99s-negotiation-of-race-and-art-challenging-%e2%80%9cthe-unknown-tanner%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14634","title":{"rendered":"Henry Ossawa Tanner\u2019s Negotiation of Race and Art: Challenging \u201cThe Unknown Tanner\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henry Ossawa Tanner\u2019s Negotiation of Race and Art: Challenging \u201cThe Unknown Tanner\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Journal of Black Studies<\/a>
\nPublished online before print 2011-03-17
\nDOI: 10.1177\/0021934710395588<\/a><\/p>\n

Naurice Frank Woods<\/a><\/strong>, Visiting Assistant Professor of African American Studies
\nUniversity of North Carolina, Greensboro<\/em><\/p>\n

This essay is a response to an article recently published by Will South<\/a> titled \u201cA Missing Question Mark: The Unknown Henry Ossawa Tanner<\/a>\u201d in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide<\/a><\/em>. Tanner<\/a> was the foremost African American artist of the late 19th century. He has emerged as an exemplar of Black achievement in the arts and is now included in the canon of American art of that period. While Tanner labored to remove the equation of race as the defining factor for his artistic output, he never lost sight of his racial identity. South\u2019s article suggests otherwise and he reconstructs Tanner as a \u201ctragic mulatto<\/a>\u201d who, on several occasions, passed<\/a> as White to advance his career and social standing. South\u2019s conclusion seriously jeopardizes Tanner\u2019s hard-fought reputation and greatly diminishes his celebrated cultural significance. I weigh South\u2019s evidence against documented sources and conclude that Tanner unabashedly affirmed his \u201cBlackness\u201d throughout his life and art.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay is a response to an article recently published by Will South titled \u201cA Missing Question Mark: The Unknown Henry Ossawa Tanner\u201d in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Tanner was the foremost African American artist of the late 19th century. He has emerged as an exemplar of Black achievement in the arts and is now included in the canon of American art of that period. While Tanner labored to remove the equation of race as the defining factor for his artistic output, he never lost sight of his racial identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,125,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[6716,6709,6717,102,6711,6710,6712,6707],"class_list":["post-14634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-henry-o-tanner","tag-henry-ossawa-tanner","tag-henry-tanner","tag-journal-of-black-studies","tag-naurice-f-woods","tag-naurice-frank-woods","tag-naurice-woods","tag-will-south"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52108,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14634\/revisions\/52108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}