Robert T. Freeman: Allan Crite—American Griot

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a newly commissioned public work of art by Robert T. Freeman pays tribute to the life and legacy of Allan Rohan Crite (1910–2007), an artist-storyteller who delighted in chronicling the beauty of his African American community in Boston. Allan Crite - American Griot, 2025 will be on view on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade through February 10, 2026.

Robert T. Freeman (b. 1946, USA) is a figurative painter known for his bold gestural brushwork, vivid color palette, geometric forms, and abstract approach to his subjects. Freeman’s monumental canvases reflect personal experiences and probe the complexities of race and politics. Freeman has been exhibiting for over 40 years and his work is held in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts and the National Center for Afro-American Artists, Roxbury, Massachusetts. Freeman is a Gardner Museum Artist-in-Residence.

With a career spanning the 20th century, Allan Rohan Crite devoted himself to depicting the multicultural, multiracial, and multigenerational community of Boston. He maintained an artistically experimental practice ranging from oil paintings documenting everyday moments to prints and watercolors of spiritual themes picturing holy figures as Black. Although nearly 30 years Crite’s junior, Freeman knew Crite and moved in similar circles; both appeared in the landmark exhibition Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston in 1970 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  

In his work for the Gardner’s Façade, Freeman renders Crite as larger-than-life—an exalted figure, generous mentor, and documentarian watching over his beloved city—mirroring Crite’s illustrations of divine figures rising above Boston.

“Allan Crite - American Griot is a wonderful testament by a younger artist celebrating an older, well-renowned and venerated fellow artist,” says Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art. “He is memorialized in Freeman's work as a Rembrandt-like figure towering over us holding brushes and a painter’s palette.”

Honoring the manner in which Crite took on the role of griot—storyteller, advisor, and keeper of history—Freeman surrounds Crite with friends, community members, and children pulled from his street scene paintings, each a record of life in Boston’s Roxbury and South End neighborhoods in the 1930s and 40s. Among these is Crite’s Harriet and Leon (1941), also on view inside the Gardner Museum in the concurrent exhibition Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory, the first comprehensive retrospective dedicated to Crite at one of his favorite hometown museums.

Additional works by Crite focused on his depictions of Black Madonnas can be seen in conversation with a 16th-century devotional image from the Gardner Museum’s collection in Visions of Black Madonnas. These three exhibitions at the Gardner are a part of a city-wide celebration of the seminal artist. At the Boston Athenaeum, the partner exhibition Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston explores Crite’s role as a storyteller and knowledge keeper.

Robert T. Freeman: Allan Crite - American Griot, 2025 is supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, the Abrams Foundation, the Barr Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Barbara Lee Program Fund, The Tom and Katherine Stemberg Fund for Exhibitions and Programs, and Fredericka and Howard Stevenson.

The Artist-in-Residence program is supported in part by Lizbeth and George Krupp and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and directed by Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art. Funding is also provided for site-specific installations of new work on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade on Evans Way.

Learn more about fall 2025 exhibitions at the Gardner Museum. For press inquiries, please email Dawn Griffin, dgriffin@isgm.org or press@isgm.org. Other inquiries: information@isgm.org.