Black models in modern art
A recent New York City art exhibition, now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, explores the importance of black models as key to the development of 19th and 20th century art, through their representations by French and American artists (including Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Frederic Bazille and Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault). Nancy Giles talks with curator Denise Murrell about how the Harlem Renaissance influenced painters such as Henri Matisse, and with Brooklyn artist Mickalene Thomas about black figures in art at a time of social and political transformation.