“I think that every picture should tell a story and I think if a picture doesn't tell a story then it's not a picture.”[1]

Archibald Motley, Jr. was born in New Orleans in 1891 to Mary Huff, a former schoolteacher, and Archibald Motley, Sr., a railroad porter. When Motley was still a baby, the family moved to Chicago, where their circle of friends included civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph. The Motleys were the only African Americans in a predominantly Italian area, which left Motley somewhat isolated from the black neighborhoods of Chicago. To compensate for this absence, Motley “made it a habit to go to . . . churches, movie houses, dance halls, skating rinks, sporting houses,” where members of the city’s black communities would gather.[2] There, Motley would observe and sketch the scenes and faces that became a key component of his art as an adult, paintings that Alain Locke would one day describe as “provocative” and offering a “half-Rabelaisian version of negro city types.”[3] From the age of nine, Motley knew he wanted to be an artist, and in fifth grade, he began leaving school during lunch to go to the local pool hall, where he would make sketches of the patrons. After high school, Motley was offered a full scholarship to study architecture at the Armour Institute by its president, Frank Gunsaulas. When Motley turned it down in order to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, Gunsaulas, impressed with the young artist’s talent and ambition, offered to pay his first year’s tuition. Motley graduated from the Institute in 1918 but returned a year later for one semester to study with George Bellows. 

Initially interested in portraiture, Motley found it difficult to earn a living, due in part to the fact that most of the wealthy white patrons favored white artists, and black patrons were either financially unable to or uninterested in supporting black portrait painters. He moved to the South Side neighborhood known as Bronzeville, where he lived among many intellectuals and artists such as Marion Perkins. Despite his career early setbacks, Motley’s did have several important successes. In 1921, his painting Portrait of My Mother was accepted into the Art Institute of Chicago’s Annual Exhibition, and in 1925, Motley received the Frank Logan prize for The Mulattress as well as the Eisendrath Prize for Syncopation. Although he was turned down for a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1927, that same year, Motley’s painting Mending Socks was voted the most popular in the Paintings and Water Colors by Living American Artists exhibition at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, and Motley also had his first solo show, at the New Gallery in New York City. Of the twenty-six works in the exhibition, twenty-two were sold, and Motley’s paintings were featured in articles for The New York Times Magazine and Opportunity. In 1928, the Harmon Foundation awarded him a gold medal for The Octoroon Girl, and in the following year, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to spend 1929 studying art in Paris.

SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL
Hampton University Museum, Hampton University, Hampton, VA
Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY
Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York, NY
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, IL
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
United States Postal Service, Washington, DC
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1928  
New Gallery, New York, NY

1933  
Chicago Women’s Club, Chicago, IL

1957  
Chicago Public Library, Chicago, IL

1988 
Your Heritage House, Incorporated, Detroit, MI

1991  
The Art of Archibald J. Motley, Jr., Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; High Museum and Georgia-Pacific Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

2014
Archibald J. Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1939
Contemporary Negro Artists, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

1940
Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro (1851-1940), Tanner Art Galleries, Chicago, IL; traveled to Library of Congress, Washington, DC

1968
Invisible Americans: Black Artists of the 30’s, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY

1978
New York/Chicago: WPA and the Black Artist, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY

1990
Against the Odds: African American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL

1991
The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, The Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center / King-Tisdell Cottage, Savannah, GA; Hammonds House Galleries and Resource Center (now Hammonds House Museum), Atlanta, GA; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; Boston University Art Galleries, Boston University, Boston, MA; Main Gallery, Arts Consortium of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH; UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures, University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), San Antonio, TX; Canton Art Institute (now Canton Museum of Art), Canton, OH; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Art Gallery, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL; Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, Pittsburgh, PA; Cheekwood Museum of Art, Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, Nashville, TN; Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV; Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Ocean Springs, MS; Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College of Louisiana, Shreveport, LA; Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC; The Museum of Art/Tallahassee, Tallahassee, FL; Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA; Henry Ford Museum (now The Henry Ford), Dearborn, MI; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA; Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY; Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS

1994 
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN

1997
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, IV, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, TN
Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, Hayward Gallery, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, England; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Revisiting American Art: Works from the Collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY

1999
African American Art in Chicago, 1900-1950, Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, Chicago, IL

2001
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VIII, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Texas Southern University Museum, Houston, TX

2002 
African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, IX, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

2003
Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists 1925-1945, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY

2004
Mood Indigo:  The Legacy of Duke Ellington – A Look at Jazz and Improvisation in American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

2005
Eye Contact: Painting and Drawing in American Art, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

2008
African American Art:  200 Years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

2009
Il Secolo del Jazz: Arte, Cinema, Musica e Fotografia da Picasso a Basquiat (The Jazz Century:  Art, Cinema, Music and Photography from Picasso to Basquiat), Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rovereto, Italy; Museé du quai Branly, Paris, France; Centro de Cultura Contemporànea, Barcelona, Spain
Harlem Renaissance, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK

2013
INsite/INchelsea: The Inaugural Exhibition, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY, December 18, 2012-March 9, 2013

2014
Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue from the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr., Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC

2016
The Color Line: African American Artists and the Civil Rights in the United States, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France

2018       
Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet to Matisse and Beyond, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
Something to Say: The McNay Presents 100 Years of African American Art, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil
Truth & Beauty: Charles White and His Circle, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2019
Alvaro Barrington: Artists I Steal From, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, England
Out of the Crate: New Gifts & Purchases, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Self in the City: Highlights from the Collections of the Hudson River Museum and Art Bridges, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
The Whitney's Collection: Selections from 1900 to 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Detroit Collects: Selections of African American Art from Private Collections, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

2020      
Black Histories, Black Futures, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA

2021
Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Afro-Atlantic Histories, curated by Kanitra Fletcher; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA