Charles Alston

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, 1907, Charles Alston became a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, illustrator, and educator. He studied at Columbia University and New York University to received his B.A. and M.A. degrees respectively.

As a teacher he taught at the Harlem Community Art Center, Harlem Art Workshop, and Pennsylvania State University. He was associate professor of painting at The City University of New York and a muralist for the WPA during the Depression. His two-panel mural of that period, Magic and Medicine, can be seen at Harlem Hospital.

Other works can be seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit Institute of Art; Atlanta University; and Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Alston was a member of the Board of Directors of the National Society of Mural Painters and an active member of Spiral, an artists' collaborative in the '60s. As an educator, he was selected by the Museum of Modern Art and the U.S. State Department to coordinate the children's creative center at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. Alston died April 27, 1977, in New York City.