NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ.- Born in North Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in Boston, Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007) created a rich visual record of Black life in 20th-century urban America, revealing a sense of community that resonates across time and place. The new exhibition Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers—New Brunswick, offers a sweeping overview of his long career as a storyteller and cultural historian who chronicled the everyday lives of his friends and neighbors.

“Crite gifted the art world with iconic imagery that spans much of the 20th century, but only recently has he gained recognition in a broader art-historical context,” said Maura Reilly, director of the Zimmerli. “The artist primarily depicted the people and places around his longtime home of Boston, but his work evokes a feeling of belonging that is universal.”

Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood features 65 paintings and works on paper, exploring themes meaningful to the artist: neighborhood, community and religion. Over a career that spans eight decades, Crite documented the multicultural, multiracial and multigenerational communities of Boston, as well as historic social and economic changes that transformed the nation in the latter half of the 20th century.

Crite’s vibrant paintings of neighborhood scenes from the 1930s and 1940s are some of his most celebrated works. While many of his contemporaries in New York portrayed Black subjects through two stereotypical extremes—famous entertainers or anonymous figures—Crite chose his middle-class neighbors in Boston. He captured their everyday activities: children learning and playing, mothers and babies meeting in the park, men reading the news on the corner, people commuting and at the office.

A dedicated Episcopalian, Crite often portrayed religious scenes that are common art historical subjects. The exhibition includes a full set of his Stations of the Cross: I-XIV, an important Biblical narrative that encourages Christians to explore the themes of suffering, sacrifice and redemption. Crite also placed Biblical figures in familiar, contemporary settings. His well-known Streetcar Madonna, along with two other images of Madonna and Child navigating the public transit system, inspires viewers to experience spirituality beyond the sacred walls of the church.

From the 1950s onward, Crite experimented with new techniques on paper, continuing to explore the meaning of community—particularly as the physical landscape around him shifted. He documented the detrimental impact of urban renewal—what he called “urban removal”—and the gentrification that displaced long-established Black and multicultural neighborhoods.

Crite lived the community-centered values he depicted. His home was a gathering space for scholars, historians, artists and community leaders. That legacy continues in the current work of Johnetta Tinker and Susan Thompson, who—like their mentor, Crite—capture Black communities grounded in lived experience, rather than stereotypes. Four quilts from their 2021 series Deeply Rooted in the NeighborHOOD, Homage to Allan Rohan Crite are included in the exhibition.