Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960 | Art & Artists

Apr 28, 2017–June 2, 2019

No One Exists Alone

A painting of 4 people in an abstracted space.

No One Exists Alone

The subjects of family and community took new prominence during a period when migration became a hallmark of the American experience. Artists such as John Steuart Curry and Arshile Gorky used painting to conjure people and formative experiences from childhood. Curry evoked the rural Kansas of his youth, while Gorky painted the mother he lost in the Armenian genocide. Other artists, like James Van Der Zee, created pictures during the Harlem Renaissance that, countering a history of racist depictions, show the dignity of Black families and communities. PaJaMa (the name assumed by Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French for their collaborative photographs) gave visibility to queer relationships that continue, in our time, to demonstrate the commonality of love and to enrich our understanding of what family and community mean.