Allan Rohan Crite was a world renowned artist who grew up in Boston’s South End in the early part of the 20th century. After enrolling in the Children’s Art Center and graduating from English High, he attended the MFA School and graduated in 1936. His work was first shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1936 and his first solo show at the Boston Athaneaum was in 1948. He went on to work at the Charlestown Navy Yard for over thirty years, while his paintings drew local and then national and international attention. During this time, he attended Harvard Extension School, where he earned an ALB degree in 1968. Looking at all of these experiences together, Allan Rohan Crite truly was a son of Boston, his work opening a window on the experience of Black Bostonians in the 30s, 40s, and beyond. If you are a lover of Boston history, you won’t want to miss the special exhibition of his work on view at the Boston Athenaeum through January 24 and at the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum through January 19th. In this episode, Michelle Leblanc from the Athenaeum joins us to discuss the two wonderful exhibitions Crite’s work that are on display in Boston right now and what we can learn about Boston history from them.
Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston and Urban Glory
- Griot of Boston at the Athenaeum
- Urban Glory at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum
- Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood Liturgy, the companion book
- Our past episode about the Children’s Art Center
- Our public domain header image is Allan Rohan Crite’s, “School’s Out,” 1936, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration, 1971
Automatic Shownotes
Chapters
| 0:13 | Introduction to Allan Rohan Crite |
| 3:33 | Nikki Takes the Wheel |
| 4:12 | Michelle LeBlanc Joins the Conversation |
| 7:49 | Understanding the Boston Athenaeum |
| 9:12 | Exhibitions of Allan Rohan Crite |
| 11:32 | The Legacy of Allan Rohan Crite |
| 16:42 | Representation in Art |
| 21:56 | The Impact of His Career |
| 29:52 | The Generosity of Artistic Community |
| 31:48 | Digital Engagement with His Work |
| 35:19 | Summarizing His Legacy |
Transcript
Jake:
Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
Introduction to Allan Rohan Crite
Jake:
This is episode 343, Allan Rohan Crite, Griot of Boston, and Urban Glory. Hi, I’m Jake. Co-host Emerita Nikki is going to be taking the wheel again this week, and only partly because I have bronchitis.
Jake:
For those of you who didn’t catch the last episode or didn’t listen to Hub History way back in the very beginning, Nikki co-founded the show with me, and she hosted with me every week for the first three years or so. She officially left the show in 2019, but she’s coming back off the bench to help me out with the show for the next few months while I’m working on a new podcast project. If you want to hear more about my side gig, there’s a quick four-minute episode up in the feed where you can hear more about what I’m working on. In this episode, Nikki’s going to be chatting with Michelle LeBlanc, Director of Education at the Boston Athenaeum, about two wonderful exhibitions of the work of Allan Rohan Crite that are on display in Boston right now. Allan Rohan Crite was a world-renowned artist who grew up in Boston’s South End in the early part of the 20th century. After enrolling in the Children’s Art Center, which we talked about way back in episode 125, and after graduating from English High, he attended the School of the MFA and graduated in 1936. His work was first shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1936, and his first solo show was at the Boston Athenaeum in 1948. He went on to work for the Navy Yard for over 30 years, while his paintings drew local and then national and international attention.
Jake:
During this time, he attended Harvard Extension School, where he earned an ALB degree in 1968. Looking at all these experiences together, Allan Rohan Crite truly was a son of Boston. His work opens a window on the experience of black Bostonians in the 30s, 40s, and beyond. If you’re a lover of Boston history, you won’t want to miss the opportunity to see our city through his eyes. We hope you’ll visit the special exhibition of his work on view at the Boston Athenaeum through January 24th and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through January 19th. And before Nikki takes over for the week, I just want to pause and wish a special thank you to everybody who supports Hub History. As we close in on the 10th anniversary of this podcast, I can’t express how grateful I am to everyone who helps me make Hub History. Whether you kick in a few bucks here and there on PayPal, or you’ve made a monthly commitment on Patreon.
Jake:
Even while I’m taking some time away from the show, I’ve really enjoyed tuning into these interviews that Nikki’s pulled together. It reminds me that the reason we started this show way back in the fall of 2016 was because we really wanted to listen to a Boston History podcast, and we just couldn’t believe that nobody had started one yet. Now, almost 350 episodes later, that Boston History Podcast is a reality, thanks to the support of our generous listeners. So to everyone who’s already supporting the show, thank you. And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com slash hubhistory or visit hubhistory.com and click on the support us link. And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.
Nikki Takes the Wheel
Jake:
Okay, Nikki, take it away.
Nikki:
I’m joined now by Michelle LeBlanc. Michelle is the Director of Education at the Boston Athenaeum. She previously served as Director of Education for a decade at the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library. She has over 20 years of experience in museums, libraries, and classrooms, teaching history and designing collaborative programming for varied audiences. And she has worked across a variety of historical sites, from Old South Meeting
Michelle LeBlanc Joins the Conversation
Nikki:
House and the Paul Revere House to Historic New England. We are here with Michelle LeBlanc, Director of Education at the Boston Athenaeum. Hi, Michelle.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Hi.
Nikki:
I am excited to talk with you about Allan Rohan Crite and the Boston Athenaeum and your current exhibition. But I thought maybe to get started, could we just talk a little bit about what the Boston Athenaeum is and why folks should go visit you?
Michelle LeBlanc:
The Boston Athenaeum is an organization that has been around since 1807. Long before there was a public library system of any kind in Boston, there was the Athenaeum. And it was actually started by a group of learned men, many of whom were ministers, for example, who were young, too, in their 20s, 30s, who needed, wanted a space where they could come together and pool their resources to have a lending library, as well as subscribe to periodicals and newspapers and things like that. And over time, the institution grew. It started. Was more than just a library, though. I think they called it a social library, which is I think a great word, something that we kind of think of libraries as still being today. And it was a space for pooling resources together, but also cultural happenings. So lectures, concerts, there was in the building that we’re currently in at 10 and a half Beacon Street, two galleries, a sculpture gallery, and a rotating gallery of portraits. And that collection that the Athenaeum started actually went on to seed the Museum of Fine Arts. So the Museum of Fine Arts essentially started at the Boston Athenaeum in the mid 19th century.
Nikki:
Oh, wow, I did not realize that connection.
Michelle LeBlanc:
It was really a sort of prime mover and shaker cultural space in 19th century Boston, and one that has deep affiliations with many of our famous authors of the 19th century. You’re Nathaniel Hawthorne, for example. Louisa May Alcott was a reader, as they called her at the time. So we have, for example, her entire reading list when she was checking out books from the Athenaeum. So it has these deep cultural roots in Boston. And it remains today a membership-supported library. So we have a little over 6,000 members today, and we continue the same mission in many ways. We are a cultural space. We have concerts, lectures. We have lending library. We also have a really deep well of special collections that are open to all. Anyone can come in and make an appointment. And then we have an amazing art collection. So, as we’re going to talk about in a bit about Allan Rohan Crite, we have a significant chunk of his art in the Athenaeum.
Nikki:
You know, I was reading recently about how, you know, there’s such a cultural, like, misconception about what a library is, because so much of what we see depicted in TV and movies, and, you know, even read about in books is like librarians meanly shushing people, right? Like, it is a place to be quiet and do nothing. But it’s so far from the truth of what a library is. And I think it prevents people from really experiencing what libraries have to offer.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Definitely. And I think most people think of their library as more than just
Understanding the Boston Athenaeum
Michelle LeBlanc:
books. And that’s the same for the Athenaeum. So many of our members become members for all kinds of different reasons. Some of them love the social events. Others love the unfettered access to a large circulating collection of books and all kinds of other resources. But it is, above all, also a beautiful building, and you can come in as a visitor and visit the first floor. We have a museum space, essentially, where the gallery for the Allan Rohan Crite show is and lots of other gorgeous things to see on our first floor, too.
Nikki:
Can you explain to our visitors what the exhibit is and the connection with the exhibit at the Gardner Museum?
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yes, there are two concurrent exhibitions, and they were conceived of in tandem with one another by the two curators.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Diana Sieve-Greenwald and Christina Miquelon, who…, Both were interested in putting together exhibitions at each respective institution, but decided they were stronger together. And what amazing luck that they started talking about having sort of a citywide retrospective of and celebration really of Allan Rohan Crite’s work. The exhibition at the Athenaeum is called Allan Rohan Crite Griot of Boston. And the one at the Gardner is called Allan Rohan Crite Urban Glory.
Exhibitions of Allan Rohan Crite
Michelle LeBlanc:
So the main sort of differences between them are a little bit the focus and the particular pieces that are on display, although there’s lots of crossover. But the Gardner Museum was very important to Mr. Crite and to his mother. She took him there a lot. And he went there as an adult and was very inspired, especially by Mrs. Gardner’s religious art, her Renaissance pieces. And you can see many of the DNA of his love of that collection in his own art. So, they have a lot of his liturgical pieces, many of his Madonnas, which he’s very well known for, his series Stations of the Cross that he did of linoleum prints that are quite gorgeous. And then he was also really inspired by.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Mrs. Gardner’s house museum and wanted to sort of achieve his own house museum later in his life. The Athenaeum was an institution that Mr. Crite was a member of and also loved. And he was very friendly with Walter Muir Whitehill, one of the directors and also the curators, especially in the 60s and 70s. And he in fact donated over 100 pieces to the Athenaeum in 1971.
Michelle LeBlanc:
So we are one of if not the largest institutional holder of Mr. Crite’s works, there are other collections in private hands, and he’s very prolific artists, especially with this printing press. So our show at the Athenaeum really emphasizes a more wide ranging retrospective of the styles and mediums that he worked in. And also many of the pieces, most of them, in fact, are from our own collection with a few loans. So many of the oil paintings that the Athenaeum has always displayed in the first floor and other floors of the building actually are on loan to the gardener right now. And then the two shows will kind of merge together in February and travel to the Zimmerle Museum at Rutgers University. So we’ll actually be leaving Boston, some of the pieces anyway, for a little while.
Nikki:
So now is the time to pounce and see the exhibit.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Now is the time, yes. And after the shows are long over, one can always come and see quite a few of Mr. Crite’s oil paintings hung on the first floor of the Boston Athenaeum.
The Legacy of Allan Rohan Crite
Nikki:
For folks who aren’t art enthusiasts, a lot of folks may not know who Allan Rohan Crite is, but he is incredibly prolific. He’s born in 1910, moves to Boston with his family at one year, and then spends his whole life in the South End and Roxbury, right? And so you mentioned that the Athenaeum has potentially the largest public collection. His pieces are held in over 100 institutions. And so Plentiful, why don’t more people know who he is?
Michelle LeBlanc:
That’s a great question. You know, in many ways, he was exhibiting almost his entire life, even as a very young man, he had shows on display of his works at the South End Boston Public Library branch, a gallery on Newberry Street, I believe in the 30s also exhibited him and many galleries throughout Boston. So it’s not as though he was hidden from public view. There were lots of opportunities where one could go and see his art.
Michelle LeBlanc:
But I think he may be better known by many if they know him at all for his sort of earlier works, the oil paintings and watercolors that he did in the 1930s and 40s, which are part of what’s called his neighborhood series. And I think a lot lesser known for the more prolific part of his life, the back end, I hate to say the back end because it It was decades. But after the mid-50s, he really embraces the printing press and he purchases eventually an offset lithography press, a multi-lith press it was called, really a commercial machine that he just adored and was using it to print bulletins for the Episcopal churches around Boston and Cambridge, but was also using it for his own artistic practice in so many other ways. So I’d say, you know, up front, To kind of put it bluntly, I think there often could be a snobbery around him and the multitude of materials that he was putting out that they were not oil paintings, they were not watercolors, they were not singular, one of a kind items. But at the same time, he’s really experimenting with all kinds of forms and visuals and being very generous with his art, giving it to individuals for their own collections. And he loved the idea of just sharing his art.
Michelle LeBlanc:
So I can’t speak personally to the art world. But I think, again, there’s a bit of a maybe it was a bit of a snobbery around his moving away from the more sort of fine art. But the the mastery of drawing and printing were really phenomenal and just just embracing all of these different modes. He also kind of moves into a phase where he’s doing a lot of writing, almost like zines, comic style art. So really like kind of of his time in that way.
Michelle LeBlanc:
I think also, and our curators have talked about this and other scholars, there’s a lovely catalog that goes with both of the shows that has some great essays in it for anyone who’s interested in learning more. Those can be purchased at either institutions or online. But a lot of the scholarship also points to the fact that Mr. Crite is kind of this middle artist. And I think you’re, as a Black artist, you, in the 20th century, in the time that he’s painting, he’s a bit of an outlier. So there are other Harlem Renaissance artists, for example, as he said, who were often painting scenes of jazz clubs, for example, or they might be painting southern scenes, sharecropping, kind of a more modern view, I guess, of Black life in a city. And Mr. Crite was very intentional that he was painting a very everyday middle class black life in a northern city, also Boston with a relatively small black population relative to other northern cities in the United States. And so, the sort of everyday nature of his art puts him in this kind of other place. And I think, you know, art trends come and go and go up and down. And I think he happened maybe at a certain time period to be a little bit left by the wayside in the art circles, I suppose, for recognition for his subject matter.
Nikki:
It’s so interesting to think about, you know, the fact that he was painting these scenes of a Black middle class in, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, right? And like, we’re still having conversations today about representation. And I think, in many areas of the media, like still lacking that depiction of just normal, everyday life, Black middle class.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yes, 100%. Didn’t you mention representation?
Representation in Art
Michelle LeBlanc:
His liturgical works too. So he has lots and lots of Madonnas. And, you know, the Gardner show really emphasizes this everyday divinity, as he put it. But Madonna’s, I think a favorite is Madonna on the streetcar, which is on display at the Gardner’s show and is part of the Athenaeum’s collection. But a black Madonna with a black Jesus sitting on her lap, sitting on a streetcar in Boston with white passengers looking onward at them. And just the sense of, you know, this everyday beauty and life. And if you look hard enough for it, you can find it. But at that time that he’s painting, that he’s – he created a book of spirituals that was published by Harvard –.
Michelle LeBlanc:
He’s showing these spirituals with black figures in them, but also these biblical stories with black figures. So he is certainly not the first to do that, but he is someone at that time period who is doing it in great, great numbers and really is putting forward. And when asked kind of, why did you do that? And he’s saying, well, I go to a black Episcopal church like this is the world that I live in and this is who I see. And so why would I do anything else? So very matter of fact about represent, without saying representation is important. He’s just saying this is, this is the reality of my world. And this is what I see. And here it is.
Nikki:
Right. He’s just, he’s just doing it. He’s not talking about it. He’s just doing it. Now, you know, he lived in Boston almost his entire life, right? Except for the first year. Does he have a body of work that presents other cities? or was he exclusively a Boston artist?
Michelle LeBlanc:
There are a few pieces. One piece in our show that is outside Boston, he has Our Lady of Marblehead. So he has a really beautiful image of Madonna floating over Marblehead Harbor. Cambridge, acknowledging it as a separate city, but he has a number of paintings and images of Cambridge. Off the top of my head, I think there are some. I could attest to his later career, he was able to travel when he got into…
Michelle LeBlanc:
Actually probably into his 60s and 70s mostly, and he starts to travel. He goes to Mexico, he goes to Puerto Rico, he goes most importantly to China several times. And this was part of an artist program that he was doing with MIT. So he was traveling with other artists as well, and many of whom were his mentors, young Black artists from the same neighborhoods, to South End Lower Roxbury. So he documented his travels, and especially his trip to China, he kind of created a book of all of his experiences there. So I would say that I’m sure there may, there are some but in our collections, anyway, I don’t know of any other cities, but he really wanted to embrace this idea of the global story. And also, that we are kind of all from the same global families. So he really gets, as I said earlier, like the zines, he kind of starts publishing these sort of world histories almost about, you know, the African diaspora and Latin America and sort of looking at those histories and then drawing those histories as well as writing about them. So in a way, he, yes, he just takes in the whole world at a certain point.
Nikki:
It makes sense, right? Because as he’s presenting the everyday experience of himself and his community, well, then, of course, he would document his travels because he was doing that. And, and other middle class black folks were doing that as well. And, you know, as we’re talking it through… It really strikes me the parallels between art and history. And I say history in the narrow sense, right? Because he is documenting his time, his life, his community, right? He’s just doing it through visuals and through painting, instead of through diaries and through letters. But it really, in some ways, serves a very similar purpose.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Absolutely. And those who knew him and spent time with him, he said that he was just a constant sketcher. He always had a notebook. He, in fact, called his notebook his brains. So one of his mentee artists would say, you know, he would always be looking around, where are my brains if he put his notebook down and couldn’t find it. So that trip to China, he would just be constantly sketching and then would go back later to the hotel that night and create the fuller drawing. So it really was just second nature to him. It was how he experienced the world.
Nikki:
When I was researching him a little bit for this show, I learned and I did not
The Impact of His Career
Nikki:
know this before that he had a career, right? He was essentially like full-time employed for much of his life. He was not a full-time artist. And so I learned that he was employed as a draftsman at the Charlestown Navy Yard from 1941 into the seventies. So obviously through the war years, how do you think that impacted his work? And, or, you know, does he have sketches and artwork reflecting his work life in addition to his personal and his community life.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yes. So he was employed. He had a day job. And as you said, he was a draftsman. He was later an illustrator for the Charlestown Navy Yard. So he was there from the beginning of World War II until the Navy Yard closed in, I believe, 1974.
Michelle LeBlanc:
And the Athenaeum’s show actually has several works that are part of our collection, watercolors of his daily life there. But in addition, a piece that is owned by the Boston National Historical Park that is essentially an aerial view of the Navy Yard, like a blueprint that Crite water colored and gouashed on top of. So it’s actually a gorgeous view of the Navy Yard. It probably hung, we believe, in one of the buildings at the Navy Yard for a while. But in terms of his actual artistic output, he wasn’t signing it because it was not considered part of his work, right? It was his job. work for hire.
Michelle LeBlanc:
So we have some and actually the Navy Yard has a number of ships and other illustrations that he did, including the one that I just mentioned. He also, I think in the 60s, maybe early 70s was doing also for the staff newsletter would do cartoons and drawings and things. So they have some of those as well. Some of those are featured in the catalog too, and can be seen and kind of reflect some of his political leanings about his historical trends. And he kind of talks about Christopher Columbus and has images of Native people that he’s encountering and kind of talking about how Columbus didn’t discover America, that Native people knew it was always there. So like bringing out these small pieces of who he was in the.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yeah, I think, you know, that he had this, this training, he had two kinds of training, had real classical art training from the School of Museum of Fine Arts and his earlier training as a child at the Children’s Arts Center. And then he would have been applying that not only to his work as an illustrator at the Navy Yard, but then again, backing up and looking at his daily life. So many of his watercolors, we have a whole series of those that show just sort of like when people are passing through the gates with their passes. I think also, you know, in terms of employers in Boston, after like Boston didn’t have a huge influx from sort of the first wave of the great migration of Southern black population arriving here, mostly because there wasn’t a lot of industrial work like there were and was in Detroit, for example.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Or Chicago, but the second wave a little a bit later on um especially as we get into world war ii the black population of boston does increase quite a bit and many of them are employed at the charlestown navy yard because it is a major employer and for example um artist john wilson who’s a younger than Crite but contemporary uh was also working at the navy yard and has uh, you know, an illustration that he did of himself on a streetcar arriving at work. So, you know, thinking about that is really interesting, too. And there were other artists and photographers, black artists and photographers who worked at the Navy Yard, and the time that Crite was alive and working there. So it makes you wonder if they had connections through that, that their job.
Nikki:
So it’s just such an important time for the Charlestown Navy Yard. So I just think how fortunate that somebody like Allan Rohan Crite was just coincidentally working there as a draftsman and an illustrator and, you know, captured all of this. It’s really, again, I come back to from a historical lens, his work is so incredibly profound. And I really like the neighborhood pieces, because you can go to so many of those streets and corners in the South End and Lower Roxbury today, and there is Union Methodist Church, right? It’s still here. And it’s amazing to see, you know, a scene of Black families going into the church in the 1940s and see folks going into the church today, right? It’s really powerful. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the show. Can we talk just a little bit, I guess, about the curation of the show and, you know, what the hope is, right? What impact do you hope to have on folks who come and see it?
Michelle LeBlanc:
I think more than anything… Getting that sense of how a prolific Mr. Crite was, how he really embraced so many different artistic mediums. But I will say from the start of this process of putting this exhibition together and both institutions, the Gardner and the Athenaeum, worked very closely with advisory teams of people who mostly people who knew him directly or have done a lot of research around his life and work. And the one word that kept coming up again and again was generosity.
Michelle LeBlanc:
And that was really I think the guiding star for both institutions how do we really put a show together that demonstrates Mr. Crite’s generosity as a person as an artist so from that you know the show in many ways it’s not quite chronological but you will see again a lot of watercolors you will see a couple of oil paintings that Mr. Crite did. Also this period where he’s working at the Navy Yard, moving into his print period. So a lot of printed pieces and portraits and things that he did of other artists. But I think the real beating heart of the whole show is that the labels on a huge number of the works are written by those who knew him. So they are, as we call them, community labels that are telling the story of this piece of art through someone’s perspective. So the individuals are everyone from Susan Thompson, for example. We have Dart Adams, who knew Crite. He’s someone who grew up in the South End and really was very inspired by Mr. Crite’s life and work.
Michelle LeBlanc:
And those labels just give us the sense of for not only of what Mr. Crite was like, but also maybe when you’re looking at an image, say of a street in the South end that looks completely different today, you know, what, what happened to that street? Like what’s the history there? So we’re kind of telling this chain, this idea of changing Boston, this idea of Crite really giving back to his community, his generosity by capturing
The Generosity of Artistic Community
Michelle LeBlanc:
the people and the places within it. And then this sort of second phase of his career where he’s mentoring artists as part of the Boston Collective and a group that was young black artists who were up and coming. And this proliferation of printed materials that he was doing on his lithography machine. So it’s, you know, it’s not just a sort of timeline of Mr. Crit’s life, although we do have a really amazing timeline in the show that you can read when you’re here.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Just really placing him within this bigger context of all of these people, these places, and art trends, art movements, I guess I should say, you know, that he’s embracing that I think, maybe in the past, were not acknowledged, and maybe a little bit of his radicalism, too. He’s not someone who’s thought of as a political artist, but he is writing and creating art that is really of its time period. And I would say that’s especially true of his works in the 1970s, when he’s kind of doing everything from portraying the combat zone. He has, you know, a series called Human Sexuality, where he’s really looking at, you know, trying to sort of take away the stigma of naked figures and really looking at the flow of the cycle of life, and doesn’t shy away from, you know, these topics and really wants to embrace them and share them with others.
Nikki:
I just feel like all of that is inherently political, right? Like the choice to reject stereotypes and present everyday life as it was, is just radical.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Radical what it is. Yeah.
Nikki:
So as we talk about the subject of the art, this does remind me that I wanted to ask you about the Allan Rohan Crite Boston digital map in partnership with the BPL. What was the creation of that like?
Digital Engagement with His Work
Michelle LeBlanc:
The Athenaeum, since we are holders of Kright’s art, and we want to continue to share it and teach with it. My role as education director, we’ve been doing work with educators, and we’re actually creating lesson plans for especially for Boston based educators who This art is an amazing teaching resource for kids who live in the neighborhoods that are portrayed. So we were thinking beyond just the life cycle of this physical exhibition, what, In what ways could we continue to bring Mr. Crite’s story into communities and give it legs beyond the physical show? So we started talking about wouldn’t it be great to have a digital map that we could share with people that really place because again, he’s so place based in his art. So we talked with the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library. And they have a grants and aid program and so agreed to take us on. And we worked with them. Our team here, our exhibition assistant, Gene McFarland, and other members of our team.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Researched, wrote, figured out what were all of the really key places in Mr. Crite’s life, everything from the homes that he lived in in Boston, one of which was destroyed as part of urban renewal projects and highway building in 1971, to Harvard University, where he worked after he left the Charlestown Navy Yard and also got an honorary degree from the Extension School.
Michelle LeBlanc:
To St. Bartholomew’s church in Cambridge, where he attended services with his mother as a young boy. So thinking about all of these places and connecting them with images, his own art, but also photographs from the BPL’s collection and others, and creating an interactive digital map that could further tell Mr. Crit’s story beyond what we have room for on the walls of a gallery. So that map will live on beyond the show. And it will also live on on the Leventhal’s site. And we hope as if more comes to light, we hope to add to it and amend things if we need to. We also were able to place some sidewalk decals like vinyl stickers and 10 locations that are in the map across the city as well as in Cambridge. So we have one, for example, in front of the Athenaeum that tells a bit about Mr. Crite’s connection to the Athenaeum. But if you walk around and you go by 410 Columbus Ave, which was Mr. Crite’s home, uh, There’s an image there that shows a self-portrait of him with his own home in the background. If you walk by the AME Church on Columbus Ave, there are some images over there. His former home, the one that was torn down, which would today approximately be kind of nearer to the Carter Field and Playground at Northeastern University.
Michelle LeBlanc:
That was Dilworth Street, which is a street that does not exist anymore. So there’s an image there that shows a painting he did of the area. So we just wanted to make his art. Again, he’s someone who’s in the community all the time, showing the community. So we wanted to give back a bit by just spreading him around physically in those locations as well. So that’s a part of our map project, too.
Summarizing His Legacy
Nikki:
How would you summarize his legacy?
Michelle LeBlanc:
I think his legacy is, again, I return to the word generosity and all of the senses of that word, both of his generosity of his art and creating what he created and capturing the places and people, but also the relationships that he built. And those are still maintained the loving memory of the people who are alive and knew him. But I think while his reputation and legacy are very much tied in with Boston, I think that over time, he will definitely be placed amongst the best of the 20th century artists in terms of just his inventiveness, his ability to integrate different styles, and just the beauty of what he was doing. And I think especially his religious and liturgical art, in addition to his community paintings, his neighborhood series. So just really bringing in like all of the ways that he was an artist and not just the oil paintings that most people know him for.
Nikki:
So you mentioned that when Mr. Crite was a child, he was enrolled at the Children’s Art Center, which as a side note, is still operated by United South End Settlements today. It’s on Rutland Street in the South End. And I remember reading that his mother, Anna May, was a poet, and she really encouraged him to pursue artistic endeavors. Where did his education take him from there.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yes, Anna Mae Cricht, his mother, and they were very close for his entire life. She died in the 70s. And she made sure that Allan was educated in all the ways that a young kid in Boston could be educated. So everything, as you mentioned, the Children’s Arts Center, where he was identified from a young age as having a lot of talent. There’s even a book that the teachers who are School of the Museum of Fine Arts artists as well, published, and they included some of, Allan’s childhood drawings as samples of how sort of the progression of children’s art training and understanding.
Michelle LeBlanc:
But she also took him all over the place, the Athenaeum, the Museum of Fine Arts, where he would see African sculpture, for example, and started to integrate some of that into his art, the Gardner Museum.
Michelle LeBlanc:
He was a student at Boston’s English High School, which was then in the South End, now in Jamaica Plain. So he was a student, Boston Public Schools, and then goes on to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts for his classical art training. Yeah. But his education was really, you know, very classically trained. But as anyone who lives in Boston knows, you’re just surrounded by amazing artistic opportunities and resources, if you know where to look for them. Even the Boston Public Library was a place that he spent a lot of time researching. He eventually exhibits at the South End Branch. So his education was, again, formal, but also his mother made sure that he was on a constant rotation of inspiration and, And, you know, I think the church also is a place where he, the Episcopal Church, where he drew a lot of his inspiration, biblical images, things that he was seeing in the churches themselves. So you can just feel all of those influences around him. But he was definitely someone who, you know, at the same time, again, was a student in the public school system. So it’s kind of a great story to think about how he came up in Boston as an artist.
Nikki:
He really is a son of Boston.
Michelle LeBlanc:
He is a son of Boston.
Nikki:
He is as Boston as Paul Revere, just in a different century.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yes. Absolutely.
Nikki:
So you mentioned his connection to all of these like great Boston institutions. So I feel like we have to note that his first show at the Athenaeum was in 1948. And then we have the current show that opened in October. Is that right?
Michelle LeBlanc:
Yes.
Nikki:
And how long do folks have to go see it? Because I think it’s so important for any lover of Boston and Boston history to see the city through Mr. Crite’s eyes.
Michelle LeBlanc:
You have until January 24th for the exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum. And the exhibition at the Gardner Museum will close a bit earlier on January 19th.
Nikki:
Michelle thank you so much for joining us for chatting about Allan Rohan Crite and the exhibit, and I really hope that some of our listeners will be visiting the Athenaeum and the Gardner Museum soon it.
Michelle LeBlanc:
Was my pleasure thank you Nikki.
Nikki:
To learn more about Allan Rohan Crite, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 343. We’ll have links to all of the information you need to visit the Athenaeum and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum before their exhibitions of Crite’s work close later in January. Make your plans to see his remarkable work before it’s gone.
Jake:
Our thanks to Nikki for that great interview. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. I still have profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and as at hubhistoryatbetter.boston on Mastodon. But these days, the only social media site where I’m actually actively posting and interacting with people is Blue Sky, where you can find me by searching for hubhistory.com. If you’ve unplugged from the social media grind, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link, and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. If you do, drop us a line, and we’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.