LeRoy Foster: Salon Style

📽️ Jeanne and Ralph Graham Curatorial Fellow Andrew Ruys de Perez gives us some deep dive knowledge behind some of the portraits on the salon-style wall in "LeRoy Foster: Solo Show."
🖼️ “Salon-style” refers to hanging multiple works at various levels. This style is more traditional than the more familiar, contemporary, single-level museum style, tracing its history back to annual British and French Royal Academies open exhibitions. This strategy was used to display the breadth of Foster’s work at Cranbrook Art Museum, his first solo show at a museum, with works ranging from the 1940s to the 80s.
❤️ One group of works in this hanging focuses on portraiture. One of the earliest works in the exhibition is a painting of Foster's lifelong friend, Helen Richter, from 1947, when Foster was still in college. Richter ran the Richmond Café and would feed Foster in exchange for art.
🏛️ From later in Foster’s career, we have a portrait of Dr. Charles H. Wright who opened the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. Foster probably painted this portrait in the 1970s when he was a fellow at the Wright.
🎬 During that time, we know Foster painted multiple portraits of Paul Robeson-an important cultural figure he admired. Robeson was a famous stage actor during the Harlem Renaissance and was one of the first stars of the “talkies” after the silent film era. In the exhibition, he is portrayed in two of his famous roles: as Ol’ Man River from the musical "Showboat" and as the eponymous character in the Eugene O’Neill play, "The Emperor Jones."
⭐ "LeRoy Foster: Solo Show" is on view at Cranbrook Art Museum through March 3, 2024.