Nobody Knows the Glory: Karamu Artists Inc. and Cleveland’s Black Art Resurgence

Eighty years after Karamu Artists Inc.’s 1941 exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, CMA highlights the collective’s role in shaping Cleveland’s Black arts scene and its broader cultural influence, with Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community. The exhibition opens March 23.

In 1938, the United States was enmeshed in unflinching racial segregation and widespread poverty. Black Americans, already the most vulnerable to these conditions, also ranked among the most invisible in American life, with limited representation in democracy and mainstream culture. Yet, despite this marginalization, Black art began to experience a subtle but significant amplification. Jazz pulsed through the nation, while the Harlem Renaissance—now firmly established—reshaped the country’s intellectual climate. At the same time, in overlooked cities like Cleveland, social realism in visual art flourished, underscoring the resilience, resistance, and far-reaching impact of Black expression.

That year, Louis Armstrong first recorded his transcendent rendition of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” a folk spiritual that carries the weight of collective suffering—from the Antebellum South to the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration. Its lyrics, simple yet moving, repeat “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” punctuated by “Glory, Hallelujah,” a delicate testimony to pain and progress.

That year in Cleveland, artist William E. Smith created Nobody Knows, a linocut print that captures with depth the intersection of suffering and transcendence found in the timeless spiritual, embodied in Armstrong’s voice and ingrained in the heartbeat of Black America. The work depicts a man whose face, marked by hardship, radiates an undeniable beauty. According to Smith, the man had borne much, but despite all he endured, he remained wise and handsome.

The print is spare yet meditative, drawing the viewer into a quiet, emotional interior. From the darkness, the man’s face emerges. His calloused hand rests gently on his cheek, and his eyes—sunken and weary—remain open, luminously so. He is both shadowed, and imbuing light with soft highlights framing his face, while his wrinkled forehead carries the faint, resigned lines of a long life. The image holds a profound stillness, an unyielding coexistence of suffering, endurance, and longing.

At 25, Smith had already learned the resilience forged through struggle. Orphaned at twelve, he migrated with his siblings from apartheid in the American South to a forsaken Cleveland, where they confronted the harsh realities of poverty and cramped corners of urban life. He eventually found refuge at Karamu House, originally named the Playhouse Settlement, where its founders, sociologists Rowena and Russell Jelliffe, provided both financial support and artistic mentorship. Within its walls, Smith joined Karamu Artists Inc., a printmaking collective that defined art in the 1930s and ’40s, creating living imprints of Black life and artistry that resonate today.

Within Karamu Artists Inc. was a collective of prolific artist-educators, including William E. Smith, Richard Beatty, Elmer W. Brown, Fred Carlo, Zell Ingram, Hughie Lee-Smith, and Charles Sallée. Refracted through their personal experiences, their artistic production departed from the dominant American Scene style of the 1930s, exploring the often-invisible contours of Blackness as a vibrant possibility within American life.

Smith and the artists of Karamu Artists Inc. primarily employed linocut, a relief printmaking technique that bypassed the need for a printing press. Carving into linoleum—originally designed for flooring—they often turned to unconventional materials, such as umbrella staves, instead of traditional printmaking tools. This process mirrored the concept of amplification, bringing invisible elements to the surface: as ink was applied, the uncarved areas emerged while the carved sections disappeared. The result was a striking, evocative contrast that, much like jazz, thrived on improvisation and fluidity.

Karamu Artists Inc., though not a formal school or recognized art movement, created a unified set of ideas and practices that captivated both local and national audiences, drawing the interest of Alain Locke, the intellectual architect of the Harlem Renaissance. Major exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1941 and the Associated American Artists Galleries in New York in 1942 brought their work to the forefront. Over several decades, its artists produced work that blurred racial and regional lines, resonating far beyond geographic boundaries. Their output—editioned prints, playbills, commissions, and contributions to periodicals like The Crisis—captured the rhythm, the highs and lows, of everyday life with understated power. In scenes of labor, urban squalor, and family dynamics, their art revealed often overlooked moments, both tender and troubled, giving shape to universal emotions like grief, joy, love, and the search for belonging.

Eighty years after Karamu Artists Inc.’s 1941 exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, CMA highlights the collective’s role in shaping Cleveland’s Black arts scene and its broader cultural influence, during a pivotal period in American history that straddled the Great Depression and the Civil Rights eras. The exhibition, Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community, opens March 23 and remains on view through Sunday, August 17.

The exhibition confronts the ways the collective was marginalized throughout history—despite its proximity to major movements like the Harlem Renaissance and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Although many Karamu members had successful careers—Lee-Smith and Brown through painting, and Sallée in decorative arts—the collective’s visibility faded after the 1940s. For decades since, their work remained hidden, known only within academic circles like Case Western Reserve University, Yale University, and the Western Reserve Historical Society. By challenging this erasure, the exhibition calls for a reevaluation of American art history itself and offers an opportunity for a wider audience to recognize their vital contributions.

Curated by Britany Salsbury, curator of prints and drawings at the CMA, and Erin Benay, independent curator and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University, Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community features over fifty works, archival materials—including writings from the collective—and reflections about the exhibit from key voices in arts and culture, such as Richard J. Powell and Curlee Raven Holton. Tony F. Sias, Karamu’s current director, offers insights into its enduring cultural significance.

Salsbury has been key in repositioning the collective’s work within the museum’s permanent collection, reasserting its position in the art-historical canon, while Benay has worked to reconstruct the collective’s fragmented history, situating it within a larger study of printmaking practices in Cleveland.

Working closely with Salsbury and Benay from the early stages of research and development, Karamu serves as a vital anchor for amplifying the collective’s cultural force. The institution loaned key works from its collection, underscoring its commitment to preserving and showcasing Black artistic legacies. As the nation’s oldest Black theater, Karamu continues to present performances, exhibitions, and educational programs that engage the community while upholding its legacy of championing Black artists through cultural production and outreach.

The exhibition reveals a pivotal, untold chapter in Karamu’s history, spotlighting its commitment to graphic arts. James A. Porter, a leading art historian of the early twentieth century, named Karamu a “veritable bastion” of innovation, shaping the cultural landscape despite fewer resources than wealthier, predominantly white-led institutions. Karamu thrived on limited means, sustaining creative spaces and supporting artists with what it had—enough, though not on the scale of its better-funded counterparts.

Karamu’s print studio, both popular and innovative, flourished despite financial constraints. Here, artists embraced affordable relief techniques, with linocut taking precedence over the more costly printing press. Karamu also provided scholarships for advanced printmaking at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute, a key site for the WPA’s Graphic Arts Project. Artists like Smith and Sallée created within Karamu’s Black-centered orbit while engaging with the predominantly white WPA, absorbing knowledge that they shared, enriching the Karamu community in the process. This duality reveals how Karamu Artists Inc. navigated racial dynamics within the art world—marginalized yet unwavering, persistently carving new paths beyond the confines of established barriers.

Zell Ingram’s contributions to Karamu House’s printmaking community are a critical intersection between Black artistic production in Cleveland and the Harlem Renaissance, especially through his collaborations with Langston Hughes. A lesser-recognized aspect of Hughes’ biography and artistic trajectory is his time at Karamu, where he immersed himself in literary art and printmaking. This buried chapter of Cleveland’s art history speaks to the broader erasure of narratives surrounding Black artists in the city, even those of global acclaim. Together, Hughes and Ingram blurred the lines between literature and visual art, advancing Black expression through collaborative praxis. The exhibition offers a rare glimpse of Hughes’ prints, including a woodcut he created with Jacob Lawrence.

The collective also played a pivotal role in nurturing a local Black creative economy, offering a membership model that provided exhibition opportunities and platforms for artists to sell their work—crucial support for sustaining their livelihoods. By the 1980s, Karamu had become a major venue for celebrated artists like Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Elizabeth Catlett, alongside emerging talents, including women printmakers.

This symbiotic relationship between Karamu and the collective not only solidified individual artists’ careers but also catalyzed the growth of a market for Black art, fostering a new generation of collectors, critics, and connoisseurs. This shift contributed to the rise of Black-owned galleries, such as the Renaissance and Malcolm Brown Galleries, which became vital spaces for exhibiting and selling work in Cleveland. In doing so, Karamu reinforced the economic agendas set by Karamu Artists Inc., while helping cultivate an ecosystem that remains central today.

Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community arrives at a time of deep division, where despair undermines hope and uncertainty clouds the nation—echoing the societal strife of 1938, as eloquently captured in Smith’s interpretations of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” Black Americans continue to fight for their rights and rightful representation in both the arts and society, despite being pushed to the margins. The ongoing exclusion of Black narratives leaves a lasting impact on the next generation of Black creatives, one that is both fraught and fertile with opportunity.

This exhibition underscores the artistic rigor and resilience of Karamu Artists Inc., while critiquing the systemic erasure of Black artists, whose contributions are often only acknowledged posthumously, with many never receiving the recognition they truly deserved. Although Cleveland’s contemporary Black arts scene has gained visibility and influence, it remains precariously situated within and dependent on an institutional framework that continues to undervalue Black artistic production.

A new generation of multi-hyphenate artists and cultural spaces builds on the foundation laid by Karamu Artists Inc., challenging the status quo by pushing boundaries in galleries, museums, and civic spaces. They are creating networks and opportunities that deepen the legacy of resistance and ingenuity established by their predecessors.

Among them is Antwoine Washington, a contemporary artist working in painting and social practice, who has exhibited at the CMA, Shaheen Gallery, and other influential arts and culture institutions. As the visionary behind the Museum of Creative Human Art, he supports underserved artists and promotes equity through curating exhibitions and hosting youth graphic art workshops at Zygote Press.

Amber N. Ford, working across photography, printmaking, and editorial, uses her lens to explore the limitless variations of Black life, providing gentle access points to its realities. Ford’s photographic eye has been sought after by international publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. In 2024, Ford was honored with the Cleveland Art Prize Emerging Artist Award for her distinctive contributions to the visual arts.

ThirdSpace Action Lab, led by Evelyn Burnett and Mordecai Cargill, is a grassroots cooperative and bookstore in Glenville. It centers Black radical imagination and counters the harms of disinvestment from Black communities through racial equity solutions that include arts and culture. Its exhibitions have showcased rising stars like Ford, Angélica Dass, and Kamari Carter.

Their far-reaching accomplishments draw the city nearer to a new Black arts resurgence, yet the fundamental struggles for representational justice, economic stability, and liberation central to the work of Smith and his contemporaries persist. The troubles they witnessed continue today. The exhibition invites us into a profound dialogue with history, where past burdens meet the brilliance of Black artistry, and demands that museums and associated institutions confront their complicity in overlooking these narratives.

Amanda D. King is a visual artist, cultural strategist, and social justice advocate. Her multidisciplinary practice spans photography, design, and social practice. Her work explores embodied grace and converges notions of beauty, identity, and spirituality into visual language and social action. She is the co-founding creative director of Shooting Without Bullets, a nonprofit creative agency modeling an alternative arts ecosystem that addresses, refuses, and eliminates inequities in the arts and society.

King presented a solo visual art exhibition at Karamu House in 2021, supported by funding from The Timothy L. Stephens III Memorial Family Fund of The Cleveland Foundation, with Drs. Amy and Susan Stephens serving as trustees. She was also an inaugural recipient of Karamu’s Room in the House Fellowship in 2019.

Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community
March 23–August 17
101A–B, James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries
Cleveland Museum of Art