MS01.01.03.B02.F23.085

introduction to the traveling exhibit of 1933 in which he talked
about the objectives of the Negro Art Movement and African
Negro Art. Although he listed the important
contributions made to the New Negro Movement by the
Harmon Foundation, his main objective was to admonish
Black artists to look to African art for new sources of
inspiration in their work. According to
Locke, it was incumbent upon the Negro Art Movement to encourage the
Negro artist to develop Negro art and promote the Negro theme and
subject as a vital phase of the artistic expression of American
life. 27 Perhaps Brady felt that Locke underestimated the good of
the Foundation's exhibition program. She did not feel comfortable
with Locke's emphasis on an African format in the art of the Negro.
Although she seldom spoke of art being best served when treated as though no
color problem existed, it was not Brady's desire to see Black artists move
further away from the main-stream of American art as she envisioned
would happen under Locke's plan for a School of Racial Art.
Locke emphatically made the point that only six years prior to
the 1933 exhibition "the share of Negro subject material in the field
of American fine art was negligible; little, if anything, was being
done for the encouragement of the Negro artist as such, and many
thought that there was some implied restriction and arbitrary
limitation of the Negro artist in the program of Negro art as "racial
self-expression". 28 Locke went on to say that art neither answers
nor solves our sociological or anthropological questions. "We must
judge, create and consume it largely in terms of its universal
vacuum, each, however great, always has some rootage and flavor of a
particular soil and personality. And just as it has been a critical
necessity to foster the development of a national character in the
American art of our time, by the very logic and often by the
very same means, it has been reasonable and necessary to promote and
quicken the racial motive and inspiration of the hitherto isolated
and disparaged Negro artist 29
Brady though[t] Locke was preaching racial
harmony in her presence and among the
financers of the Awards program and
a near-to form of Black nationalism
on the other. Later on, she would become
suspicious of his every move and keep him
at a comfortable arms distance in the future.