At the MFA, John Wilson’s Retrospective Focuses on Process and Legacy 

For years, I passed the late John Wilson’s large, looming sculpture, Eternal Presence, on my way to and from Franklin Park on my morning runs before work. When I finished my laps around the course, I’d pass White Stadium and cross Seaver Street as I ambled toward home. I’d search for the “big head” sculpture, as it’s known in the neighborhood, as a marker for rest. The tall brown head with wide eyes and closely cropped hair sprouting up from the grass signaled that I was almost at the finish line. I’d stop and catch my breath before walking up the short hill to my house. I didn’t know much about Wilson, the artist behind it, except that he also created another sculpture that lives at Roxbury Community College. But the Museum of Fine Arts has set out to raise the profile of Wilson—a gifted creative from Roxbury who spent much of his long life striving to make the invisible visible—with a retrospective of his work titled “Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson.”

MFA curator Edward Saywell, chair of prints and drawings, shared that Wilson wrote in a note for a talk at Boston University around 1970 that the Black man was an invisible American and how, looking back at his work, he came to realize that he was trying to make Black people become visible. A text on the gallery wall notes that when Wilson was a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in the early 1940s, he discussed the lack of proper representation of Black people in the media and how, with his images, he aimed to offer a “sense of dignified humanity.”

Along with Saywell, Patrick Murphy, the MFA’s Lia and William Poorvu curator of prints and drawings, Jennifer Farrell from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and scholar Dr. Leslie King-Hammond curated the collection of more than one hundred of Wilson’s drawings, paintings, and sculptures on display inside the Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery. The exhibition aspires to show the scope and impact of Wilson’s varied, poignant art that wrestles against racism and inequality. A community advisory group, Saywell says, helped think through certain ideas and presentations within the exhibition.

Once inside the gallery’s doors, an orange wall with Wilson’s bio—seemingly a nod to the Orange Line that cuts through Roxbury—greets visitors. The large room is split up into three main sections with subgroupings. The Early Works section includes “Paris (1947–1949),” “World War II: Atrocities at Home and Abroad,” and “Mexico (1950–1956).” The Family Ties section features “Children’s Book Illustrations,” “Family and Friends,” and “Collective Action.” And finally, the Eternal Presence section includes “Martin Luther King Jr: Honoring a Civil Rights Icon.” There’s also a short film for museumgoers to enjoy.

Wilson’s early works include black-and-white sketches of everyday life and pieces from his time in Paris as an apprentice of painter and sculptor Fernand Léger. While there, he focused on painting images of laborers in deep, moody colors. There are also vivid pieces such as a sun-kissed brown family in Campesinos (Peasants)(1953) and Negro Woman (1952) from his time in Mexico from 1950 to 1956.

There’s a cutout in the wall separating the first room from the one behind it that allows people at the start of the exhibition to witness others engaging with Wilson’s offerings in another section. The Eternal Presence maquette is visible through that cutout. I find myself peering through this window in an attempt to gauge the reactions of others.

Wilson’s early works beg me to linger. Masterful lithographs of people on streetcars and men chatting convivially on street corners with cigarettes dangling from their mouths feel resonant and familiar. Piercing eyes look back at me from Streetcar Scene (1945), where a Black man is surrounded by white passengers and seemingly alone. Wilson’s skill is evident here, turning an ordinary moment into one loaded with emotion. Several works in this section feature a shadowy figure of a boy, which the artist later realized was himself, ever watchful in drawings.

While in Paris, Wilson created bold oil paintings on canvas that depict laborers and speak of Léger’s influence on Wilson. In House Painters, Paris (1949–64), three workers, none of whom face the viewer, stretch above or stoop below to finish the job. Their body language seems to speak to the anonymity of their line of work, where passersby may not notice them in their daily comings and goings. Another, Le Métro (1949), is a bright watercolor painting in cobalt blue, green, black, and red and shows a pole on a train bifurcating a faceless figure.

In the “World War II: Atrocities at Home and Abroad” subsection, the Black Soldier (1943) shows a man in uniform walking away from his wife and child with his gun in hand. The soldier turns to look at his family one last time; his wife is clad in a blue dress and his son is in a tangerine-colored shirt. The Statue of Liberty is off in the distance in the direction the soldier is heading toward. The irony of the soldier’s willingness to fight despite the lack of freedom and respect for Black Americans on our land’s soil gives me pause. Deliver Us From Evil (1943), which depicts saluting Nazi soldiers on the left side of the lithograph and a lynching on the right, causes me to stand in silence for a beat. In another depiction, a fearful Black man is surrounded by an open-mouthed mob in Study of a Lynching (1946), which elicits a visceral reaction.

Deeper into the space, past the glass-encased notebooks, works, and writings, the themes lighten. There’s a bright yellow corner teeming with books gathered by local artist Ekua Holmes. This sunny nook features Wilson’s book illustrations and appears after the war-themed work. “It’s a genuine space for reading, for nurture, for decompression,” Saywell shares.

Museum patrons can lounge in marshmallow-like beanbag chairs, view the framed drawings on the wall, or leaf through books with his illustrations—such as Becky, written by Wilson’s wife, and Striped Ice Cream—which line yellow shelves.

What’s most thrilling is seeing Wilson’s meticulous planning and processing. On view are several studies of Father and Child Reading that were drafted roughly twenty years before the 1985 bronze statue of the same name at Roxbury Community College. There’s also a series of drawings of Roz Springer, a muse of Wilson’s and friend of his daughter Becky. Her features appear in Eternal Presence, displayed near the National Center of Afro-American Artists, a small plaque notes. Early drawings and sculptures of Martin Luther King Jr. are also exhibited. Wilson’s bronze sculpture of MLK was the first to honor an African American leader on display at the US Capitol.

Near his MLK works are large, colorful portraits titled Study for the Young Americans (1973), a mural that never materialized. The vibrant images of a girl sitting cross-legged, a man by his bike, and a girl in a pink dashiki-like shirt differ significantly from the other pieces; they’re more joyful and hopeful, showing Wilson’s range.

In addition to Wilson’s paintings and drawings of his community, he also worked on many self-portraits. Throughout the exhibition, there are several: from the shadowy boy in his early art to oil paintings and lithographs, as well as a favorite of mine made in 2002 using pastel, chalk, opaque paint, and collage on paper. He was eighty years old when he created the self-portrait. These works call to mind abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass’s commitment to and collection of self-portraits. Wilson, like Douglass, knew that keeping a record of existence is a powerful form of activism.

---

“Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson” is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through June 22, 2025.