Spotlight Tour: Portraiture by 19th-Century Black American Artists, with Sophia Scott ’25

On this tour, Sophia Scott ’25 will examine the contributions of Black artists whose labor and skill were central to shaping American art, even as the artists themselves remained excluded from many of its spaces. We will look at how these artists navigated the constraints of their time by creating portraits, often of white subjects. These works invite us to reconsider whose stories are seen and valued. The stops on the tour will be Joshua Johnson’s Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1810–15), Julien Hudson’s Portrait of a Young Woman in White (1840), and Edmonia Lewis’s marble bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871).

Spotlight Tours offer a chance to explore the collections of the Harvard Art Museums through the eyes of a Harvard student. Free and open to the public, these tours start outside the museum shop on Saturdays and Sundays at 11am and 2pm. Drop in and join the conversation! And find out what the Student Guides are up to anytime on Instagram @harvardarthappens.

Please check in with museum staff at the Visitor Services desk in the Calderwood Courtyard to request to join the tour. Tours are limited to 18 people and are available on a first-come, first-served basis; no registration is required.

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