As one of the most distinctive and influential African American artists of the 20th century, the history of the nonrecognition of Sargent Claude Johnson is profoundly frustrating — yet all too indicative of the art world’s damagingly persistent biases and restrictive canons.

Johnson’s work has suffered constant marginalization resulting from long-standing racial prejudices, his geographical separation from East Coast cultural hubs as an artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area and a general preferential treatment of paintings that disadvantages sculptors like himself.

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But now at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, the exhibition “Sargent Claude Johnson” seeks to remedy the previous neglect of this crucial figure of the Black Renaissance. Located in the museum’s MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, The Huntington’s new show exists as only the third exhibition for Johnson — and the first in over 25 years.

The show’s sensitive rediscovery of Johnson’s life and art represents the culmination of an extended collaboration between Dennis Carr — The Huntington’s Virginia Steele Scott chief curator of American art — and co-curators Jacqueline Francis and John P. Bowles. Through their extensive research and sensitive handling of Johnson’s career, the exhibition platforms his powerful voice and situates it within a larger cultural and artistic context.

Drawing together 43 works from Johnson’s oeuvre, the exhibition demonstrates his extraordinary range as he sought to create dignifying artistic representations of people of color. From small, quotidian objects like his “Teapot” to the sweeping, 185-foot-long “Athletics” mural projected onto a gallery wall in a panoramic video, the objects reveal his ever-varying approach. Like several other key modernists, his technical fluency and daring in painting and sculpture allowed for feats of bold experimentation.

“Johnson is a very diverse artist,” Carr said. “He’s working in 2D and 3D; he’s working on a small, intimate scale and a huge architectural scale. And that was the challenge of this exhibition — to show various aspects of his work over time in a museum setting.”

As a sort of nucleus for the show, the exhibition joins together a handful of large pieces that Johnson produced for a 1933 commission from the California School for the Blind. Joined with the “Organ Screen” that The Huntington acquired in 2011, the accompanying lunettes and proscenium from the commission for the school’s auditorium are now on public display together for the first time in over 40 years.

The carved redwood reliefs portray lively images of children, animals and surrounding wildlife, with a particular sense of animation given by the sparkling gilding — lending an Art Deco flair to the iconography which appears to have Classical and West African underpinnings. 

Yet perhaps the most arresting objects on display are the literal poster children of the exhibition: Johnson’s sculpted portraits of young people. Featuring several of Johnson’s best known works like “Chester” or The Huntington’s “Head of a Boy,” these pieces demonstrate the artist’s sculptural ingenuity and talent. Underneath the deceptive simplicity of the sleek austerity of these five sculptures, the pieces participate in highly intelligent artistic explorations and experimentations.

For instance, the portrait “Elizabeth Gee” utilizes a glaze highly similar to Chinese celadon in its finish, underneath which the young girl is shown with a rigid upright posture, strongly resonant with the stylistic language of the Italian Renaissance. This syncretic incorporation of tropes and techniques from various cultures shows Johnson’s visionary conceptions of diversity, emphasizing the shared humanity that is present even across vast swaths of time or space — a theme running even through the enamelworks he produced at the end of his career.

“Sargent Claude Johnson” is a deeply important exhibition. In a period when the art world is reconsidering the systemic injustices of its institutions and seeking to find more inclusive means of presenting art, stories like his have tremendous impact. Thanks to the efforts of Carr, Francis and Bowles, this exhibition — and its accompanying catalog — will permit even greater appreciation for Johnson’s breathtaking output — both now and in years to come.

“We hope this show touches people’s lives, transporting them back to a time period when many depictions of people of color were racist,” Carr said. “The move that Johnson made to depict people of color from his own communities in a positive, dignified, beautiful way, is a very radical move for the 1920s and ’30s.”

“Sargent Claude Johnson” will be on view at The Huntington’s Boone Gallery until May 20, 2024. Students can receive discounted admission with a valid student ID.