Guy McElroy

Guy Clinton McElroy (1946-May 31, 1990) born in Fairmont, West Virginia was an African American art historian. He curated the major exhibit "Facing History: The Black Image in American Art 1710-1940" which dealt with the image of African-Americans in American art.

Guy C. McElroy was the son of Geraldine (née Woods) and George E. McElroy, Sr. Raised in his native Fairmont, West Virginia McElroy earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from local Fairmont State College in 1970. After he earned a master's degree in art history from the University of Cincinnati in 1972, he acquired a second Master's in Mass Communications from Boston's Emerson College in 1975.

He held the position of Rockefeller Fellow in Museum Studies at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from 1974 to 1975. He followed that position with several assistant curator roles in West and East Coast public galleries and museums. Beginning in 1978 McElroy spent 10 years at Washington, DC's Bethune Museum-Archive, first as curator and then as assistant director. It was as adjunct curator of the Corcoran Gallery where he completed his work on "Facing History."

Becoming a quadriplegic after a 1987 New Mexico automobile accident, McElroy began using a wheelchair.

He died at 44, only five months after initial publication of the catalog for "Facing History," from a pulmonary embolism at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC having nearly completed a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Maryland.

"Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940," was the first public display by a major museum to showcase depictions of African-Americans in American art. The show examined ways in which American artists "reinforced a number of largely restrictive stereotypes of black identity." The art exhibition originally shown from January 13 through March 25, 1990 at the Corcoran Gallery travelled to the Brooklyn Museum from April 20 through June 25, 1990.

Both works by approximately 80 African American and European American artists were featured in the exhibition of drawing, painting and sculpture. In McElroy's view these works depict the attitude of society toward African-Americans through the works themselves and the response they received in the marketplace. The works make overt political statements, as well as, address contemporary issues. Stereotypes, slavery and violence dominate the images. But as McElroy states in the show's catalog:

Depictions of black people can no longer rely on gross distortions of physiognomy or character to achieve racially motivated humor, but the symbolic power of visual images remains insidious. Jim Crow, Uncle Tom, Mammy, the Comic Darkey and Zip Coon no longer dominate images of African-Americans in painting and sculpture, but their ghosts live on in a host of popular mediums, most notably in the violence of action serials and the stereotyped behavior of television sitcoms.
— Guy C. McElroy, "Introduction: Race and Representation", Facing History, 1990

• Works Exhibited as part of Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940

• Watson and the Shark

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  The Power of Music, 1847

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  Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride, 1830

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  The Devil and Tom Walker,1843

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  Waking Up,1851

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  The Watermelon Boys,1876

• Thomas Eakins - Rail Shooting on the Delaware aka Will Schuster and Blackman Going Shooting,1876

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  William Whipper portrait by William Matthew Prior,1845

• Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks, 1792

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  Portrait of a Man (Abner Coker) by Joshua Johnson

• Francis Guy - Winter Scene in Brooklyn - Google Art Project

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  William Sidney Mount Eel Spearing at Setauket, 1845

• William Sidney Mount The Bone Player, 1856

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  John Quidor. The Money Diggers, 1832. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum

• "Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia", by Christian Mayr, 1838. A celebration at a slave wedding.

• Cinque, 1839 portrait of Sengbe Pieh

• Militia Training,1841

• Richard Caton Woodville - Old '76 and Young '48, 1849

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  Eyre Crowe - Slaves Waiting for Sale - Richmond, Virginia, 1861

• Francis William Edmonds-All Talk and No Work

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  Thomas Waterman Wood - Market Woman - Google Art Project

• John Antrobus - Plantation Burial

• McElroy, Guy C.; Gates, Henry Louis; Art, Corcoran Gallery of; Museum, Brooklyn. Facing history: the Black image in American art, 1710-1940. Bedford Arts. ISBN 9780938491385.
• McElroy, Guy C. African-American artists, 1880-1987: selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection. Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle. ISBN 9780295968377.