Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory, opening October 23 at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

BOSTON, MA – Around 1919, a young art student visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for the first time, and found himself in awe of its Courtyard and global collection. Now, more than a century later, we are honored to present the first comprehensive exhibition of that artist’s work: Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory, opening October 23. (Through January 19, 2026)

Lifelong Bostonian Allan Rohan Crite (1910 – 2007) was a multidisciplinary artist who exalted his neighborhoods of Lower Roxbury and the South End. A quiet radical, he reveled in the beauty and sanctity of everyday life.

With a career spanning most of the 20th century, Crite devoted himself to depicting the multicultural, multiracial, and multigenerational community of Boston. He maintained an experimental practice ranging from vivid oil paintings documenting everyday moments to prints and watercolors of spiritual themes rendering holy figures as Black. In the Museum’s Fenway Gallery, Visions of Black Madonnas juxtaposes the Museum’s 16th-century Black Glass Madonna, a work that Crite admired and visited often, with his own depictions of a Black Holy Family. Throughout his life, Crite sought art historical inspiration at the Gardner, which he remembered as a “blaze of glory, of color, of flowers.”

In his art and in his life, Crite honored the divine found in the ordinary, guided by a profound optimism and “manifest love of humanity.” At the Boston Athenaeum, another institution Crite loved, the concurrent exhibition Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston offers a sweeping overview of Crite’s long career and his legacy as a storyteller and knowledge keeper. Together, these partner exhibitions invite audiences from across Boston to participate in a city-wide celebration of a local artist and the communities he spent his life uplifting.

OCTOBER EVENTS

Boston Family Days
Sunday, October 5 and 12, 10 am – 5 pm
Boston school-aged students and two guests can receive free admission on the first two Sundays of each month by showing their Program Pass.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Interwoven
Monday, October 13, 11 am – 5 pm
Join us as we acknowledge and honor Indigenous wisdom and traditions that strengthen communities. General admission is free; advance reservations recommended.

Allan Rohan Crite: The Dean of African American Art in New England
Thursday, October 23, 7 – 8:30 pm
Join us to celebrate the life and legacy of Allan Rohan Crite, who prolifically documented the daily life of Black Bostonians. Through personal anecdotes and professional reflections, this conversation between local scholars and community leaders will honor the work of a Boston notable who has long deserved greater national recognition.

WEEKEND CONCERT SERIES:
Sphinx Virtuosi
Sunday, October 5, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
Sphinx Virtuosi returns to the Gardner Museum with works from across the Americas including two Boston premieres and an encore by the wonderful American cellist Sterling Elliott after his triumph last season.

Miranda Cuckson & Blair McMillen
Sunday, October 19, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
A musician’s musician, Miranda Cuckson comes to the Gardner Museum with a program that comprises nearly two hundred years of violin music, from Beethoven to the Jamaican-British Alberga.

Rachel Barton Pine
Sunday, October 26, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
Rachel Barton Pine returns to the Gardner Museum to perform on an instrument from the collection—the Museum’s very own viola d’amore. Featuring works from Vivaldi, Haydn, Brahms, and Charles Martin Loeffler.

ONGOING:
Saturday Open Studios
Saturdays beginning October 18, 1 – 4 pm
Join us in the Bertucci Education Studio as we gather memories of our neighborhoods through texture rubbings in an activity designed by Polly Thayer Starr Visiting Artist crystal bi.

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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
25 Evans Way, Boston, MA 02115
Information 617 566 1401 / Box Office 617 278 5156

WWW.GARDNERMUSEUM.ORG