When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Lessons from Allan Rohan Crite
Posted on February 24, 2026 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Ashleigh Coren
I recently had a conversation with a friend who attended an artist talk at a museum. As trained archivists interested in the intersections of archives and local history—particularly the histories of people missing from the archives—my friend shared an interesting exchange. During the panel, she asked the artists about how they were archiving and tracking their work, their process, and what they were doing to ensure their ideas wouldn’t be lost. The artists’ response was striking: “We’re not thinking about that. We’re thinking about the present.” A few days later, an article appeared in Hyperallergic about an artist who lost his storage space due to non-payment. His work had been sold on the market without his consent since he no longer owned what was in storage. The lessons he learned from this traumatic experience stayed with me.
This got me thinking about two connected exhibitions I had recently visited in Boston, which focused on the groundbreaking, influential artist Allan Rohan Crite. The exhibitions were held at the Boston Athenaeum, a private library, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. What was fascinating was how they complemented each other: the Athenaeum focused on Crite as a documentarian of Black life in Roxbury and the South End, highlighting the records he preserved of his work, relationships, places, and organizations that shaped his practice, as well as the role of religion in his art. The Gardner Museum exhibition centered on his artistic legacy itself, the role of religion as well, and the changing landscape of his neighborhood.
Together, these exhibitions painted a powerful picture—not just of Crite’s life, work, legacy, and impact, but also of the critical importance of documenting your work and being diligent about your place in the historical record. The amount of work that Crite and his wife did during his lifetime to ensure his story would be preserved is a vital lesson for all of us, particularly contemporary artists. What makes these exhibitions especially significant is that they took place nearly 20 years after Crite’s death in 2007. Without his meticulous record-keeping, these exhibitions simply would not have been as meaningful.
Crite moved to Boston at age one in the 1920s and spent his entire life in the South End neighborhood. What’s particularly important about his story is that when people think of Boston, Black people are often not the first thing that comes to mind—, despite Black people having lived in Boston for over 300 years. Crite was very clear about his role as a “griot,” a nod to what he called an old African tradition. He saw his work and his role in the community as a responsibility to tell stories that would be passed down from generation to generation. The idea that his work and storytelling would outlive him was central to his practice.
The Athenaeum exhibition, titled Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston, positioned Crite as a knowledge keeper—something contemporary artists, particularly in the digital age, should be mindful of. The exhibition featured remarkable items: his sketchbooks, art association membership cards, flyers and brochures from his exhibits, drawings, and photographs. Crite even created a walking tour of the South End that continues to influence current tours of Black art in Boston, which you can find on the city’s website.
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| Allan Rohan Crite’s membership card to the Cambridge Art Association and a borrower’s ticket from the Boston Athenaeum. Photographed by the author at the Athenaeum exhibit. |
The Gardner Museum exhibition, titled Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory, explored how his work documented the gentrification of his neighborhood and how urban development contributed to the erasure of Black history in cities. His home, which he and his wife intended to become a museum of his work, also functioned as a gathering space—a reminder of the importance of archiving not just objects, but moments and conversations.
One wall in the exhibition displayed various drawings, and as someone who grew up in Boston, I could identify the places featured in them. Seeing them as they existed in that particular time gave me space to mourn what has been lost. Both sides of my family came to Boston in the 1960s from the South, and they remember the city as a place where Black people, regardless of where they came from, could find community. Many of those places and landmarks are now gone.
It is truly wonderful that Crite took the time to write, reflect, draw, and paint what he saw around him. It’s easy for artists and stories to be forgotten—there are so many of both. The fact that this was Crite’s first retrospective, held around what would have been his 115th year, is both something to celebrate and a wake-up call. We must think intentionally not only about recognition, but also about what we’re doing in the present to ensure we have control over how our stories are presented in the future.
About the author:
Ashleigh Coren is a content strategist, educator, and curator based in the Washington, D.C. area.
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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.