Street Children

John Woodrow Wilson was a Black American painter, printmaker, sculptor, and teacher. The son of immigrants from British Guiana (today the Republic of Guyana), Wilson grew up in a suburb of Boston. He attended classes for high school students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and eventually graduated from Tufts University. Wilson consistently used his art to comment on politics and social justice. Among his most politically charged works are lithographs from the 1940s and 1950s which comment on injustices experienced by African Americans. Made decades later, “Street Children” demonstrates Wilson’s shift away from social realism toward abstracted figural representation. The etching depicts a group of Black youths playing with paper boats in a puddle outside a drugstore. In the background, an adult figure standing in the shadows of a doorway seems to be watching the children.