Byron Rushing, member of St. John’s, St. James’ Church in Roxbury, former president of the Museum of African American History, and former Massachusetts state representative, participated in a panel on artist Allan Rohan Crite’s life at the Boston Athenaeum on October 17. The panel was hosted in conjunction with two concurrent exhibitions of Crite’s work at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum and the Boston Atheneum, Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory and Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston, respectively. A lifelong Episcopalian and member of St. Stephen’s Boston, Crite illustrated liturgical artworks for St. Stephens, St. John’s St. James, and other churches in the region, often depicting blacks in interpretations of biblical stories and African American spirituals.
On the panel Rushing said, “The first thing I remember about Allan Crite was the noise. I walked into St. John’s one afternoon and heard all of this noise in the back of what was their parish hall…I walked back to this noise and it was his printing press…And, there was Allan running off bulletins; he did Sunday bulletins for predominantly black churches because all of the figures in the bulletins, which changed every week…were black figures.”
Edmund Barry Gaither, director and curator of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, also on the panel, said about Allan: “He was a man who expressed in the very best way what it meant to be Christian. Not someone who just announced that they belonged, but someone by their action embodied what it was to be that.”
Listen to the full panel discussion.
With a career spanning most of the 20th century, Crite devoted himself to depicting the multicultural, multiracial, and multigenerational community in Boston. His works ranged from vivid oil paintings documenting everyday life to prints and watercolors of spiritual themes. See his artwork at the Gardner Museum through January 19th and the Atheneum exhibit through January 24th.