The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has recently made an effort to acquire
figurative works by Harlem Renaissance and contemporary black artists. A few examples are now on view in a small show at the California African American Museum. "The Notion of Family," a thematic installation of works from the CAAM permanent collection, incorporates several loans from the Lucas collection: photographs by Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems plus a painting by Kadir Nelson,
Stickballers (2016).
Nelson is a contemporary illustrator in the Norman Rockwell sense, known especially for his
New Yorker covers.
Stickballers is part of a series of independent paintings imagining life in the Harlem Renaissance era. Nelson reprised the stickball theme for an April 2018
New Yorker cover.
Comments
Although I like MOCA and the Broad, it's not quite as interesting standing for more than a few minutes in front of canvases of mainly large fields of non-figurative color. Even people who favor the avant garde over "fusty" probably will end up spending more time in the Lucas than the galleries of - for example - the Marciano or Hammer.