I Have a Dream
Primary
Charles White
(Chicago, Illinois, 1918–Los Angeles, California, 1979)
Printer
Daniel Freeman
Workshop
Cirrus Editions Workshop
(Los Angeles, California, 1970–)
NationalityAmerican, North America
Date1976
MediumCrayon lithograph
DimensionsSheet: 22 1/4 × 30 in. (56.5 × 76.2 cm)
Image: 22 1/4 × 29 15/16 in. (56.5 × 76.1 cm)
Image: 22 1/4 × 29 15/16 in. (56.5 × 76.1 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Susan G. and Edmund W. Gordon to the units of Black Studies and the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, 2014.92
Keywords
Rights Statement
Collection AreaPrints and Drawings
Object number2014.92
On View
Not on viewWhen asked about his repeated use of the familial motif in 1979 White stated, “If I do a mother and child, I’m thinking of all mothers and all children. I’m thinking of the meaning of love between a woman and her child.” White alludes to the Madonna and Child, a familiar motif in his work, not only by his choice of subject but also through the triangular format of their embrace, which is a classical arrangement that produces clarity and harmony.
The work takes its title from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art commissioned "I Have a Dream" to celebrate the 1976 exhibition "Two Centuries of Black American Art." This lithograph was so popular that it sold out both as a print and as a poster.
Exhibitions
