Charles Alston's Harlem Hospital Murals: Cultural Politics in Depression Era Harlem

Abstract

In 1936, the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP, 1935–43) appointed New York City artist Charles Alston (1907–77) to be the first African American to supervise a New Deal mural project. Alston, five other artists, and their assistants designed narrative, celebratory images of Harlem, African-American life, children's fairy tales, and stories for New York's Harlem Hospital. In paired panels exploring the theme of healing, Alston depicted an African past beyond exotic and barbaric stereotypes in Magic in Medicine for the foyer of Harlem Hospital Women's Pavilion, and a racially egalitarian American present in its companion panel Modern Medicine (each 17 × 9 feet) (Figure 1). Initially, white hospital authorities rejected the works on the basis that they “contain too much Negro subject matter,” which would make them unappealing to residents of Harlem. This judgment angered Alston, since his designs were consistent with project guidelines. Because the building was a hospital in Harlem, Alston selected the theme of medicine and depicted black figures in his two panels. Yet the seeming suitability of images that looked like the people who used Harlem Hospital and referred to their collective history met with loud objections from Harlem Hospital's white administration. While it was common for muralists to base their subject matter on the local community and its history, and in fact the WPA/FAP encouraged artists to do so, officials tried to cancel Alston's commission on these very grounds. Their attempt to prevent artistic self-representation in the 1930s followed on the heels of prolonged racist hiring policies at Harlem Hospital. Alston ultimately painted his mural designs as planned; final approval of the murals did not come until 1940.