An interview with curators Jennifer Farrell, Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Met, and Leslie King-Hammond, Curator and Art Historian, on how this landmark exhibition repositions John Wilson within American art and modernism.
John Wilson (American, 1922–2015), My Brother, 1942. Oil on panel, 30.48 x 26.9875cm. Smith College Museum of Art, Purchased (SC 1943.4.1). Courtesy of the Estate of John Wilson.
For more than six decades, John Wilson (1922–2015) created art that revealed the depth and dignity of the human spirit. His paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures confronted racism and injustice while celebrating the strength, tenderness, and resilience of Black life. Rooted in personal experience yet universal in scope, his art invites viewers to see humanity in all its complexity.
‘Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson’ is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York and the largest survey of his work to date. The show features over one hundred works spanning his career, from his early Boston studies to his time in Paris, Mexico City, and New York, and his return home to Roxbury. In this conversation, curators Jennifer Farrell and Leslie King-Hammond discuss Wilson’s artistic evolution, his commitment to social justice, and the enduring relevance of his vision today.
ART AFRICA: John Wilson created influential works across six decades, yet as you’ve noted, his recognition has lagged behind his impact. How does this exhibition seek to reposition him within both American art history and global narratives of modernism?
Jennifer Farrell (JF): This exhibition surveys Wilson’s career to highlight his importance as both an artist and a teacher. His work influenced a wide range of artists, several of whom contributed to the catalogue, yet he has not received the recognition he deserves. Wilson worked in a figurative style to represent Black Americans and their experiences, drawing on Buddhist sculptures, Olmec art, the modernism of Fernand Léger, and the practice of the Mexican muralists.
Installation view of ‘Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson’, on view September 20, 2025–February 8, 2026 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of The Met. Photo: Hyla Skopitz
His art confronts the prejudices and omissions he faced throughout his life. This first major retrospective, and his first solo exhibition in New York City, spans six decades and multiple techniques to reveal the depth of his achievement. Many visitors will encounter Wilson for the first time. Others may know only specific works, such as his Dr Martin Luther King Jr. prints or the sculptures Eternal Presence and Father and Child Reading in Roxbury.
While his commitment to social justice is well known, the exhibition also highlights his formal range, the expressive power of his drawing—from quick “spot” sketches to richly layered charcoal and pastel works—and his integration of modernist and abstract elements. We also hope viewers will consider the networks and communities that sustained artists like Wilson, from the Atlanta Annuals to Camp Wo-Chi-Ca. In this progressive interracial summer camp, he met figures such as Elizabeth Catlett and Paul Robeson.
The show spans paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and illustrated books. What curatorial strategies did you use to bring coherence to such a broad body of work, and how do these different media illuminate different facets of Wilson’s practice?
JF: We wanted to show that Wilson treated all media equally. He did not see a hierarchy between painting, printmaking, sculpture, or illustration. He moved fluidly among them. For example, Father and Child appeared as a drawing, a print, a sculpture, and even on the cover of The Reporter in 1963.
We are also showing three children’s books that he illustrated. Though made for young readers, they share themes central to his practice: racism, labour, education, and human dignity. The images often relate directly to other works. The terrifying scene in Malcolm X of Klansmen descending on a house echoes his earlier mural, The Incident and its related lithograph Mother and Child (1952). Because the mural was fixed in place, the print enabled the same message to reach a wider audience. In that sense, printmaking was his most democratic form of public art.
John Wilson (American, 1922–2015), Study for the mural “The Incident”, 1952. Opaque and transparent watercolour, ink, and graphite, 43.2 x 54cm. Yale University Art Gallery, Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund, 2000.81.1. Courtesy of the Estate of John Woodrow Wilson / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Wilson often described his goal as portraying “a universal humanity.” How do you see his depictions of Black dignity, resilience, and community resonating with today’s urgent conversations about race, equality, and representation?
Leslie King-Hammond (LKH): John Wilson’s intellect, empathy, and profound sense of social justice guided his lifelong fascination with the human body. Born a man of African descent in a nation built on slavery, he sought to transcend that history by portraying the beauty and complexity of humanity. His challenge was to counter grotesque caricatures of Black people with images that affirmed their dignity.
That vision feels even more urgent today, as Americans of colour continue to face attacks on identity, agency, and citizenship. Wilson’s art reminds us that representing the Black body as beautiful, strong, and fully human is an act of resistance and love.
Wilson balanced deeply personal portraits of family and fatherhood with depictions of racial violence, labour, and civil rights struggles. How did you approach presenting this duality between the intimate and the political in the exhibition narrative?
LKH: For people of colour, the intimate and the political are inseparable. The conditions of racial violence, economic disparity, and civil rights struggles shape daily life. Wilson understood that his family, friends, and community were both his refuge and his subject matter.
Installation view of ‘Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson’, on view September 20, 2025–February 8, 2026 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of The Met. Photo: Hyla Skopitz
As a husband, father, and neighbour, he saw humanity up close. Each portrait, of kin or stranger, captures something invisible to the dominant culture. The exhibition invites viewers to pause and contemplate the nuance —the quiet gestures of resilience, pride, and grace — that define survival and selfhood.
Wilson studied and worked in Boston, Paris, Mexico City, and New York before returning to Boston. How did these international experiences shape his vision, and how is this reflected in the works on view?
JF: Wilson was deeply grounded in art history and constantly absorbed new influences. Though he remained figurative, his style evolved with each phase of his life.
In Boston, studying under Karl Zerbe at the School of Fine Arts, he encountered European and Asian art at the MFA. Seeing Buddhist sculptures there inspired later works like Eternal Presence. Yet he also recalled feeling excluded from those galleries, “None of these people looked like me… the implication was that Black people were not capable of being beautiful or true.”
A 1947 fellowship took him to Paris, where he studied with Léger and adopted bold outlines, geometric forms, and vivid colour. He admired Léger’s sense of pattern but feared becoming “a little Léger.” Visits to the Musée de l’Homme deepened his engagement with non-Western art, which he valued for its cultural function as much as its form.
In Mexico, the muralists, especially Orozco, profoundly shaped his sense of social purpose. Their art for “the forgotten ones,” as he said, helped him understand how to depict his own reality. Early works like War Scene (1940) and Deliver Us from Evil (1943) reveal that influence. He also drew inspiration from Pre-Columbian art, especially Olmec sculpture, visible in later works such as Eternal Presence and Monumental Head.
John Wilson (American, 1922–2015), Streetcar Scene, 1945. Lithograph Image: 28.6 x 37.5cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 1999 (1999.529.198). Courtesy of the Estate of John Wilson.
During his New York years, Wilson captured the city’s energy in works like Bronx Landscape (1961) and Oracle (1965), inspired by Harlem writers and nationalists. He worked closely with printmaker Robert Blackburn, whose studio became a vital creative space.
Returning to Boston, Wilson taught at BU and supported Black artists. He created public sculptures such as Father and Child Reading and Eternal Presence in Roxbury, honouring the community that had always shaped his vision.
Two of Wilson’s monumental works—Eternal Presence and the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in the U.S. Capitol—are touchstones of public art. In what ways does this exhibition highlight his role as both a studio artist and a public voice for social justice?
JF: Wilson said, “I am a Black artist. My experience as a Black person gives me a special way of looking at the world and a special identity with others who experience injustice.” His commitment to social justice ran throughout his life, not as rhetoric, but as lived emotion.
The exhibition highlights both his intimate portraits and his public works. The Mexican muralists taught him that art could be a tool for justice. In Mexico, he made The Incident (1952), an explicit portrayal of racial violence, and numerous prints at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, whose mission was to create art for the people.
Later, Wilson created public sculptures, an eight-foot statue of Dr King for Buffalo in 1983, and soon after, the King bust for the U.S. Capitol. At the same time, he was modelling Eternal Presence, unveiled in 1987 at the National Centre of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury.
Installation view of ‘Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson’, on view September 20, 2025–February 8, 2026 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of The Met. Photo: Hyla Skopitz
We placed Eternal Presence at the exhibition’s entrance. It is the work around which everything revolves. Visible from both the first and last galleries, it connects Wilson’s early depictions of Black life to his mature vision of shared humanity. The sculpture draws on Olmec and Buddhist influences, Léger’s simplification of form, and the faces of people he loved. Wilson described it as “a Black image, but one with a life force that all people can identify with.” He called it “my answer to all the omissions… a Black image you cannot ignore.”
LKH: Wilson believed art should be accessible and speak directly to those who encounter it, whether in a park, a gallery, or a classroom. He saw people as extraordinary beings, worthy of empathy and attention. His admiration for Dr King’s moral compass shaped his own pursuit of truth and compassion through art.
Wilson’s legacy reminds us that depicting humanity honestly is an act of honour. He invites each of us to see ourselves as part of what he called “the eternal universal community of humankind.”
‘Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson’ is on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, Galleries 691–693, through February 8, 2026. Learn more at metmuseum.org.
