Through over 400 objects, the Cooper Hewitt’s dynamic Jazz Age exhibition highlights 1920s American design.
Jazz Age
Posted inArt
A Rare Encounter with an Aaron Douglas Painting that References Slavery’s Past
Lavender and gold silhouettes of soldiers on horseback, waves, and a kneeling figure overlap on the flat plane of Aaron Douglas’s “Let My People Go” (1935–39).
Posted inArt
Rediscovering a Jazz-Age Modernist
Through subtle portraiture and roaring scenes of the Jazz Age, painter Archibald J. Motley Jr. chronicled the diversity and dynamism of the African-American community during the early decades of the 20th century.
Posted inArt
New York City’s Art Scene in the 1920s
We’ve all heard the tales, dripping in posthumously-applied glamour, of New York City in the 1920s. These stories are usually set in smoky speakeasies with women donning flapper dresses and short bobs, saxophones smoothly slithering along a bar full of bootlegged liquor and men in fedoras and suits. The artistic trends that blossomed from 1920s New York have inarguably influenced those of today. Here is a brief history of what happened during the decade of decadence in the sleepless and sinful siren that is New York City.
