Zadir Nelson

[Zadir Nelson’s painting for the cover of this week’s issue celebrates the Schomburg Research Center, in Harlem. He says he wanted to create “a stylistic montage as an homage to the great Harlem Renaissance painters: Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Archibald Motley, and Palmer Hayden.” Also on Nelson’s mind were artists and performers like the Nicholas Brothers, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington; the activist Malcom X; and writers such as James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston.]

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