Allan Rohan Crite painted “Bass Violin Player” in 1941 and gave it, along with dozens of his other artworks, to the Boston Athenaeum 30 years later. It shows a man in a room playing an upright ...

David Dearinger is Susan Morse Hilles curator of paintings and sculpture at the Boston Athenaeum. An art historian and curator, he received his PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of ...

The “artist-reporter” Allan Rohan Crite’s straightforward depictions of ordinary Black city life challenged simplistic assumptions. Allan Rohan Crite painted “Bass Violin Player” in 1941 ...