PUBLICLY-OWNED ART BY AFRICAN-AMERICAN PAINTERS By special arrangement with the National Museum of American Art (NMAA), of the Smithsonian Institution, we are proud to display at this site some of the nation's finest paintings by African American artists. These paintings are all in the permanent collection of NMAA, and we invite you to visit the Museum in person whenever you are in Washington, DC. The twelve paintings which will be on display here over the next few months were selected by students in the Providence College Program in Black Studies, which provided funding for the necessary licenses and which publishes this website; the staff at NMAA graciously provided the original images; our Providence College Department of Academic Media Services coordinated the scanning process. While on display, you will be able to view each image in three formats: the thumbnails on this page; larger-format versions illustrating the main pages of our site; and for highest-quality viewing, as separate images in high-resolution JPEG format. To load a painting's high resolution (300 dpi) image, click on a thumbnail below. TECHNICAL DETAILS From the Museum's archive of 4 x 5 inch transparencies, we scanned 950-1000 dpi images, in TIFF format. These 45-65 megabyte files were then downsampled to reduce file size and display easily in your Web browser. The smaller versions are 72 dpi JPEG images (medium quality setting), and they should load relatively quickly on most systems. The high-resolution pictures are 300 dpi JPEGs, are much larger files (between 100K and 600K on disk), and will take much longer to transfer to your browser. SUPPORT PUBLIC ART! We hope you enjoy our mini-gallery of paintings by African-Americans, and please remember, without the resources of the publicly-owned Smithsonian Institution and its affiliated museums, you might never have this opportunity! We also hope you'll do whatever you can to help your local African American artists. Find out who they are, help publicize their work, and encourage them to continue the rich legacy represented by the artwork at this website. Thanks for visiting!

The World of Black Studies Website
Copyright © 1998
Program in Black Studies
Providence College