Stud Poker

Charles Henry Alston

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alston’s family moved to New York from North Carolina during the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans sought work in northern cities. As a muralist, sculptor, and illustrator, he participated in the Harlem Renaissance and established 306—named for his studio’s address at 306 West 141st Street—as a gathering place for artists, writers, and musicians. An influential artist and teacher, Alston received a 1938 fellowship to travel south and document Black culture; this monumentalized genre image of a poker game may be based on a photograph from that trip. The choice of lithography and subject matter echo prints commissioned by the Works Progress Administration, for which Alston worked as its first African-American supervisor.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art