Jae Turner

“George Sleeping” Featured on Mary E. Hutchinson Site

January 22, 2013 8:32 am

Check out Mary E. Hutchinson’s painting “George Sleeping” (ca. 1937) currently featured on my digital catalog site The Artworks of Mary E. Hutchinson at http://meh.omeka.net

Hutchinson painted several portraits of George Griffiths between 1934 and 1943. Griffiths worked as a shoeshine boy and probably crossed paths with the white woman artist from Atlanta at the Harlem Community Art Center in New York. Hutchinson, who was a supervisor of teachers for the New York Federal Art Project (one of many WPA art projects), worked out of the Art Center.

I am currently thinking through issues associated with trans-racial representation, particularly during the mid-twentieth century. I would love to hear from others who are working on or have written about similar questions.