The MFA pays homage to a local legend, showcasing his largest exhibit yet

By Nia Harmon and Meg Richards

“Brilliant at all levels.”

That is how Leslie King Hammond, Professor Emerita at the Maryland Institute College of Art and former founding director of the institute’s Center of Race and Culture, described the late John Wilson.

The artist, family man, and activist will have his largest exhibit of art ever at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) – the museum he visited and studied at in his home city – starting this weekend. With over 100 of his works ranging from sculptures, drawings, and illustrations, Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson, reflects the ethos of the artist through and through.

“He saw something in individuals, all individuals. There wasn’t an individual who passed him – whether he was sitting in a street car, whether he was sitting in an office waiting with a doctor’s appointment, whether he was going to the grocery store – that he did not see something worthy to capture,” said Hammond. 

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1922 to Guaynese parents, Wilson entered a world that had a very fixed idea of who he was and what he would ultimately become. Curators recounted how Wilson visited the MFA as a teenager – where he would later study as a student – where he realized there was a stark lack of representation in the art and artists displayed. As such, Wilson used his artistic prowess as a mode of sparking and continuing discourse surrounding the Black American experience. 

Immersing himself in artistic spaces globally throughout his career, Boston was forever home for Wilson. Raising his family in Brookline, the painter, sculpture, printmaker, and book illustrator devoted his nearly one hundred years alive to using art as a mode of storytelling, creating works pertinent to the social, political, and racial issues of his time, still reigning relevant to every decade after that.

“He would not even be swayed by the popular movements at the time, whatever Modernisms or -isms that were going on, because he was in his own head with his own attitude,” said Hammond. 

After receiving a scholarship to the School of the MFA in 1939, Wilson continued his education in Paris after graduating in 1944 under the mentorship of prolific French artist Fernand Léger, whose specialty was pop-art, over a two year span. Shortly after, he moved his studies to Mexico, where he drew inspiration from the work of muralist José Clemente Orozco, creating lithographs at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Graphic Workshop). While studying and creating in Mexico, he was roused by seeing the common working class struggle between Black and Brown people. 

“He saw in the work of the Mexican muralists not only as form of art that was truly democratic in terms of its mural making, but also work that focuses on the ordinary worker in the streets or in the countryside, something that he felt was not evident in the work that he grew up seeing in our history books on the walls and institutions,” said Edward Saywell, chair of Prints and Drawings for the MFA. 

Soon after, he returned to the U.S. to graduate from Tufts University with a B.S. in Education. Simultaneously, he began his career as an educator, teaching at Boris Mirski School of Modern Art. Shortly thereafter, he began what would become a decades-long relationship with Boston University, teaching beginners art classes. 

While Saywell guided the first few steps of the tour, he emphasized an underlying theme in Wilson’s work.

“The first thing I would really underscore is that from his very earliest works, he’s focusing on the issues of economic precarity, social injustice, [and] racial violence. There is an incredibly powerful intent on his part to focus on what he saw as injustice, and what he saw, as they described earlier, the reality of being Black in this impossible world,” said Saywell.

This is a lesson he took directly from artists in Mexico, who worked primarily in murals to make their art — and their message — as accessible to as many people as possible. This is exactly what inspired what is perhaps Wilson’s most evocative and poignant work: Deliver Us From Evil, a lithograph that interrogates the U.S. government’s response to racism and violence against Black Americans.  

Wilson, who often worked in black and white, used values and tones to bring his art to life and give it vibrance, despite being grayscale. While working in these shades, he was able to see — and help others see — the emotional color in the artwork.

Themes of existentialism and surrealism came up in his art, particularly within his work that portrayed the plight of being Black in the United States.

With every stroke of his pencil, paintbrush, or any other vessel used to create his work, Wilson was nothing short of intentional, requiring those who view his work to go inward and think deeply about the human experience. 

“Here we are in Black History Month, and again asking ourselves, what does it mean? We have Women’s month coming after this. All right, we’re going to ask ourselves [a] second [time], what does it mean to be a woman? How do these factors play into how we live a life, a life of meaningfulness and mindfulness,” asked Hammond.

When he did expand beyond a black and white palette, hues of black, red, and green were prominent — the color palette associated with the African American diaspora, of which these colors together gained prevalence during and after the Civil Rights Movement. Such is evident in his work, The Incident, which forces the viewer to confront the harsh reality of lynchings during the Civil Rights Movement. This shone a light on the mothers left grieving their children as a result of this brutality. 

Familial roles and relationships are a recurring theme in his work. He famously took great inspiration from his family and loved ones. Moreover, he illuminated the value in the paternal role — specifically, the role of the Black father in an America ravaged by racism, segregation, and a society still reeling from the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X. Many of his work that features a father and child show the two embracing, enveloped in one another, which challenges the preconceived notions viewers may have of men and emotional vulnerability.

In 1985, Wilson was commissioned to sculpt a bronze bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. that now lives in the rotunda of our nation’s Capitol; a historical feat on two fronts. The bust is the first piece of art paying tribute to an African American in the Capitol Rotunda. In addition to that, Wilson became the first Black artist to be awarded a congressional sculptural commission. 

The exhibit at the MFA will run from February 8th through June 2025 in Boston, and will be moved to its new home in New York City from September 20th, 2025 through February 8th, 2026 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET).