Inevitably, Charles White was one of the artists included in David Driskell’s landmark survey exhibition, Two Centuries of Black American Art, which premiered at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 30, 1976–November 21, 1976. This was LACMA’s major exhibition for the American bicentennial year, and was the first comprehensive survey of African American art which, following its premier at LACMA, toured three other major U.S. art institutions [the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, January 8, 1977–February 20, 1977; the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, March 30, 1977–May 15, 1977; and the Brooklyn Museum, June 25, 1977–August 21, 1977]. The premise of Two Centuries of Black American Art was to acknowledge the work of Black artists during the two centuries period of 1750 to 1950, whose contributions to American art had largely been neglected. Featuring over 200 works and 63+ artists, the show included painting, sculpture, drawing, graphics, crafts and decorative arts
White was represented in the catalogue by multiple references, through the publication, a total of three images, and one dedicated page which consisted of an edited CV, a one paragraph summary of White’s significance as an artist, plus a list of the eight images of his work, included in the exhibition. Alongside the page of text there appeared a reproduction of Seed of Love, a 1969 ink drawing in the LACMA collection. Seed of Love was a drawing of a noticeably pregnant young African American woman, in profile.
Along with Charles White, Two Centuries of Black American Art included:
Charles H. Alston
William E. Artis
John James Audubon
Edward M. Bannister
Richmond Barthé
Romare Bearden
John Biggers
Grafton Tyler Brown
Selma Burke
Calvin Burnett
Margaret T. Burroughs
David Butler
Elizabeth Catlett
Claude Clark
Eldzier Cortor
Allan Rohan Crite
Joseph Delaney
Aaron Douglas
Robert S. Duncanson
William Edmondson
Minnie Evans
Edwin A. Harleston
Palmer Hayden
James V. Herring
Felrath Hines
Earl J. Hooks
Julian Hudson
Clementine Hunter
Wilmer Jennings
Malvin Gray Johnson
Sargent Johnson
William H. Johnson
Joshua Johnston
Lois Mailou Jones
Jacob Lawrence
Hughie Lee-Smith
Edmonia Lewis
Norman Lewis
Jules Lion
Richard Mayhew
Sam Middleton
Archibald J. Motley, Jr.
Marion Perkins
Horace Pippin
James A. Porter
Patrick Reason
John Rhoden
Gregory Ridley
William Edouard Scott
Charles Sebree
Henry Ossawa Tanner
William Taylor
Alma W. Thomas
Dox Thrash
Laura Wheeler Waring
Edward Webster
James Lesesne Wells
Charles White
Walter Williams
Ed Wilson
Ellis Wilson
John Wilson
Hale Woodruff
Note: though not listed in the Index of Artists, the catalogue also included work by artists such as Dave the Potter and Thomas Day.
LACMA had organized at least one previous exhibition that included work by Charles White: Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, Timothy Washington (1971).
A work by Charles White, I Have A Dream (1976), was used on the poster for the Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibition.