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In the midst of New York’s Harlem Renaissance, Fisk University invited a young African American artist to paint a mural for the library. Aaron Douglas squeezed trips to Nashville in between other big commissions in New York and Chicago. Because his best works were painted on walls, the starmaking machinery of galleries and museums ultimately bypassed him. Now a major traveling exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts promises Douglas some welcome visibility. WPLN’s Susan Knowles reports.
WEB EXTRA: One of Aaron Douglas’s former students, Gregory Ridley, also became a professor at Fisk. Ridley’s copper panels depicting the history of Nashville can be found in the Grand Reading room of the downtown library.
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