The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art have each acquired a significant work by the leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas (American, 1899–1979). The two paintings Let My People Go (ca. 1935–1939, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and The Judgment Day (1939, National Gallery of Art) derive from the acclaimed series Douglas created for James Weldon Johnson’s 1927 publication God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. Together, these critical acquisitions assure that the artist’s rare easel paintings are represented in two of the nation’s most prominent public collections. Both were acquired from the private collector who purchased the works from Douglas in 1978. Let My People Go is on view in Gallery 900 of the Met’s Lila Acheson Wing for modern and contemporary art. The

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