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When the Philadelphia Museum of Art purchased Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting The Annunciation in 1899, they became the first American museum to acquire a work by an African-American artist. That purchase announced a new era of recognition of African-American art and artists just as much as the painting itself announced a new style of art moving away from stereotypical “black” scenes towards a freedom of aesthetic choice. Persons of color could express themselves in any way, even abstraction, but faced the new problem of remaining true to themselves at the same time. The new exhibition Represent: 200 Years of African American Art and accompanying catalogue show how these artists faced the challenges posed to them by art and society and provide all of us with a fascinating guide to facing African-American history—tragic, tenacious, transcendent—through its art.
Spin a roulette wheel a million times, and you’ll see a fairly even split between black and red. But spin it a few dozen times, and there might be “streaks” of one or the other. The gambler’s fallacy leads bettors to believe that they odds are better if they bet against the streak. But the wheel has no memory of previous spins; for each round, leaving aside those pesky green zeroes, the odds for each color are always going to be 50-50.
How our own minds work is hard to see. As with almost everything else our views are shaped by the ideas our culture uses. Here are some once-tempting views about why we do what we know we will rue (tales of sin, vice and bad decisions).