Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory

Allan Rohan Crite (1910–2007) was not simply an artist. As a community elder, writer, civic leader, and griot, or storyteller, he was a quiet radical who reveled in the beauty of everyday life and created art that glorified the Black community. For the first time, Crite is celebrated in a comprehensive career-spanning show at one of his favorite hometown museums.

Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory, on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum from October 23, 2025 – January 19, 2026, is a triumphant and moving tribute to an artist and the neighborhoods he treasured. Showcasing works from across Crite’s decades-long career, the exhibition encompasses vivid depictions of life in Lower Roxbury and the South End, art for Christian worship, and late works that combined neighborhood scenes with religious vignettes. Crite created these works as he grappled with the gentrification and shifting demographics of the city he loved. Just as Boston underwent significant changes throughout the 20th century, so too did Crite’s art, evolving from documentary naturalism to works inspired by African art to a graphic-novel-like approach to line drawing and bookmaking. Regardless of the medium in which he worked, Crite honored the divine in the everyday, guided by a profound optimism and “manifest love of humanity.”

A vibrant community-driven retrospective, Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory pays homage to an artist whose legacy is still felt today, and gives everyone the opportunity to see their own humanity made sacred.

 

This exhibition is co-curated by Diana Seave Greenwald, William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Gardner Museum and Theodore Landsmark, Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Director of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University.

At the Boston Athenaeum—another institution Crite loved—the concurrent exhibition Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston explores Crite’s long career and his legacy as a storyteller and knowledge keeper, from his early Neighborhood Series to his embrace of the printing press during the mid-20th century.

Now through January 24, 2026, your Gardner Museum ticket (physical or digital) also grants you access to Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston at the Boston Athenaeum.

Gardner Museum Related Programs
October 21, 2025, 6:30 pm: Friends of Fenway Court Patron Preview
October, 22, 2025, 11 am - 5 pm: Member Preview Day
October 22, 2025, 6:30 pm: Member Opening Celebration
October 23, 2025, 7 pm: Allan Rohan Crite: The Dean of African American Art in New England
November 8, 2025, 9 am: Member Exhibitions Insight Tour
November 13, 2025, 12 pm: Urban Glory: A Virtual Member Moment
November 13, 2025, 7 pm : "The Street is a Memory": Resisting Boston's Urban Removal
December 6, 2025, 9 am: Member Exhibitions Insight Tour
December 11, 2025, 7 pm: The History of the Black Madonna: Spirituals Made Visual
January 10, 2026, 9 am: Member Exhibitions Insight Tour
January 19, 2026, All day: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, 2026

Check Out the Programs at the Boston Athenaeum
November 7, 2025 6 - 7:15 pm: Neighborhood Madonna: Soprano Candice Hoyes In Recital
November 17, 2025 6-7pm: Artist-Reporters: Documenting Allan Rohan Crite