'American Scene' a thoughtful exploration of race and identity

"African Americans and the American Scene, 1929-1945," now on view at Williams College Museum of Art, surveys that period of great social change by examining the history of the ways African-Americans were represented in the art of the time — as both subjects and creators.

Broken into two galleries, the curators, Sandra Burton and Dalila Scruggs, examine race and identity issues in both the visual and performing arts of the time, paying attention to how both African-American and white artists dealt with these issues.

Placing a contemporary African-American artist like Weems alongside Siskind, who was white and whose work here dates to the Great Depression, helps draw parallels to our current economic climate while also calling into consideration the genre of documentary photograph itself, dominated as it has been by white photographers.

The two prominent art movements of the time, Social Realism and Regionalism, came out of a desire to democratize art, to give ordinary people access to the arts.

African-American artists Samuel Joseph Brown and Jacob Lawrence, the first black artist to be included in MoMa's collection, offer works with a more straightforward view.