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Abstract
This study investigates responses of African-Americans and others to paintings by African- American artists. The paintings used in this study are from the time of the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression of the 20s, the Harmon Foundation Exhibitions, and the Federal Arts Project of the Works Projects Administration (WPA). Responses from 158 males and females from secondary public schools and universities were collected. An equal number of African-Americans and Caucasian Americans were selected from mid-west secondary public schools and undergraduate and graduate students from mid-west and southern universities. Art Educators and Art Historians chose paintings that best represented descriptive and interpretive dimensions found in paintings by African-American artists from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. The 158 subjects responded to slides of paintings by checking a blank on 18 different Likert scales ranging from 1 (most positive) to 7 (least positive). Adjectives were listed to the left (most positive) and right (least positive) of each scale. A response of 4 represented no opinion. Analysis of the data indicated there were no statistically significant differences between responses by African-Americans and Caucasian Americans. However there were appreciable response differences. While overall responses by both groups were positive, responses by African-Americans were appreciably more positive than those by Caucasian Americans.