Charles Dawson’s Dioramas, Conservation, and Racial Equity, 1940 to Present

Abstract

The twenty dioramas constructed for the American Negro Exposition of Chicago in 1940 by Charles Dawson and seventy other African American artists have fulfilled multiple educational purposes. The dioramas’ first didactic function was to inform fairgoers in the mid-twentieth century about African American history while normalizing new styles of Black visual imagery. In the twenty-first century, the dioramas are tactile teaching tools introducing emerging conservation professionals from historically Black colleges and universities to the field of art conservation.