Allan Randall Freelon

Freeleon was born in Philadelphia in 1895^[1] and trained at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art on a four-year scholarship, later studying at the Barnes Foundation (1927^[1]-29) and completing a master's degree at Temple University's Tyler School of Art in 1943. He served as a second lieutenant in the US Army during the First World War. Back in Philadelphia, he became one of the most prominent African American^[1] artists of his generation, exhibiting at the Albright-Knox Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum, and participating in the first African American art exhibition in Harlem.

His civic record was equally substantial. In 1921^[1] he was appointed assistant director of art education in the Philadelphia school district, the first African American^[1] appointed to that body's Department of Superintendence. He taught etching and lithography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1940 to 1946, edited the literary magazine Black Opals, and was the first African American elected to the Print Club of Philadelphia. He disagreed with Alain Locke's call for African themes in Black art, arguing in 1944 that the theory was propaganda rather than artistic freedom.

He died in Telford, Pennsylvania in 1960^[1]. His grandson is the architect Philip Freelon, who designed the National Museum of African American^[1] History and Culture in Washington.