Art at RCC

On Campus

Father and Child

by John Wilson. 1990

Large bronze sculpture, 7 feet tall, of a man and child reading.

In front of Media Arts Center

Erected on the RCC campus following a monument competition that Wilson won in 1985. The African American sculptor and artist was born in Roxbury MA in 1922, educated at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, studied painting in Paris with Fernando Leger and during the early1950s studied fresco painting in Mexico City after the style of Jose Clemente Orozco. Many of his graphic arts works display themes of despair, poverty and anger relatedto racial oppression. His later sculpture works "are more rounded in their quiet lyricism and represents a sense of hope rather than despair". From 1969 to 1986, Wilson was a professor of art at Boston University.

In 1985, Wilson created a bust of Martin Luther King for the U.S. Capitol in Washington, currently the only bust of an African American on display there. In 1987 he created his most monumental work, Eternal Presence or Monumental Head, a 7-foot bronze head of a black person, located at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury. In 1985, he won the monument competition to create a sculpture at RCC. In creating the 7-foot bronze piece located here,Wilson was inspired by a print, which he made two decades earlier which presents the same theme of paternal caring.

History of Fort Hill, Pt.2.

Mayor's Mural Crew, 2008.

New Mural painted in Parking Lot 1 at RCC.

Picture taken by one of the artists, Laura DeDonato.

Boston Youth Clean-up Corps (B.Y.C.C) Mural

1999-2008.

After being badly damaged, this mural was replaced by the one above.

Location: Parking Lot 1

Note: The artists retain copyright of all images. No image may be reproduced without the express permission of the artist.