Beauford Delaney, Marian Anderson


Delaney celebrates the famous opera singer Marian Anderson as a modern icon of Black excellence and civil rights.

Beauford Delaney, Marian Anderson, 1965, oil on canvas, 160.02 x 130.81 cm (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond). Speakers: Dr. Shawnya L. Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker


Additional resources

More about Beauford Delaney from MoMA

Patricia Sue Canterbury, Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2005).

Stephen C. Wicks, Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door (Knoxville: The Knoxville Museum of Art, 2020).

The Marian Anderson Papers collection at the University of Pennsylvania

Listen to Marian Anderson’s full performance at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939

Marian Anderson resources at the Smithsonian

Icons, an introduction

Abstract expressionism, an introduction


Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

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More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page as: Dr. Shawnya L. Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Beauford Delaney, Marian Anderson," in Smarthistory, January 12, 2022, accessed December 10, 2023, https://smarthistory.org/beauford-delaney-marian-anderson/.