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.

At the Boston Athenaeum—another institution Crite loved—the concurrent exhibition Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston explores the works on paper that expanded Crite’s audience and inspired those around him.