Spotlight: Organ Screen by Sargent Claude Johnson

Overview

Artwork Title: Organ Screen

Date of Creation: 1933–34

Creator: Sargent Claude Johnson (1888–1967), American.

Synopsis: Organ Screen by Sargent Claude Johnson is a massive carved and painted redwood sculptural work that depicts children singing and playing instruments alongside animals in a woodland setting. The Works Progress Administration hired Johnson to create this work for the California School for the Blind. The screen covered the pipes of the organ in the auditorium, and the sound traveled through it.

About the Artist: Sargent Claude Johnson

Sargent Claude Johnson (1888–1967) was the first Black Modernist artist from the West Coast to gain national acclaim.

Johnson’s art made a national impact as part of the Harlem Renaissance (also called the Black Renaissance), even though he lived in California’s Bay Area and not the movement’s center of Harlem in New York City.

His artistic work stands out due to his skill with multiple mediums and his embrace of Black identity at a time when many popular depictions of Black people were racist. Besides his work as an artist, he was a passionate and dedicated teacher who believed creativity was an essential civic value.

Musical Influence

As a child, Johnson studied music and art. His family thought education was essential. After both his parents died when he was a boy, his remaining family sent him and his siblings to a Catholic boarding school. In addition to obligatory religious studies, the school offered secular studies and emphasized the importance of music. Instruction included daily music theory and singing and weekly choir. This musical influence would later show in his work as a visual artist.

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration (WPA, renamed Work Projects Administration in 1939) was created in 1935 as a program to help put unemployed people to work building infrastructure and public goods. As part of the U.S. government’s New Deal, the WPA sought to revitalize the economy during the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and ended in 1939.

Organ Screen is part of a larger WPA commission Johnson created for the California School for the Blind in the 1930s. It includes seven lunettes and a proscenium that adorned the auditorium and other rooms nearby.

Today, elements of the commission are in different museums and cultural institutions, and some are lost. Six lunettes still exist today. Two are at the California School for the Blind in Fremont and four are at the African American Museum and Library at Oakland. The proscenium is at the University of California, Berkeley. As part of the 2024 exhibition on Sargent Claude Johnson at The Huntington, all surviving components of the work were reunited for the first time since Johnson made them.

Materials and Artistic Process: California Influence

Johnson worked well with a wide array of mediums. For Organ Screen, Johnson chose to work with redwood, a tree native to California, and gold. Carving redwood is difficult because it is soft and splinters easily, but Johnson carved it to great effect. He used the grain to add texture and highlights to the carvings and left it exposed in some parts but covered it with gold paint in others. The deep gouging along the tree trunk adds texture to the piece.

Symbolism and Consideration of Blindness

The California School for the Blind opened in 1860 and moved to its Berkeley campus in 1867. The auditorium in Berkeley was a gathering place for students to engage with it. The school, now located in Fremont, California, emphasizes musical education.

The students at the California School for the Blind likely accessed Organ Screen and its related components in several ways. Because blindness is a spectrum, some students would have been able to see some of the artwork. Light reflecting off the gilding or shining through the holes in the window lunettes made the piece accessible to more students. In addition to using sight, people can access it through sound because it is a functional artwork: It was installed in front of an organ and affected how the sound traveled through space. The screen, lunettes, and proscenium created a sense of drama in the auditorium. Sighted, blind, and low-vision visitors could all experience the grandeur together.

Lauren Cross, Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Huntington, said of Johnson's thoughtfulness when it came to the blind students:

"Just to see how much time he spent to ensure that this auditorium was magnificent, amazing, and worthy to experience. I think that that says a lot of his ideas about humanity and that these students were worthy of great art. . . ."

The artwork uses musical symbolism to bridge the natural and human worlds. We can see children playing music and listening to birdsong along with the animals who have come out to listen. Explore how Johnson worked with symbolism in Organ Screen:

• One of the rabbits does not have gold eyes. Johnson may have done this to signify that this rabbit is blind. Disability is natural and a part of the diversity of our world.

• This piece includes rabbits and foxes existing together peacefully. In nature, foxes are common predators of rabbits.

• The use of gold in the commission suggests a sense of the spiritual and divine. 

More Commission Components

Organ Screen is part of a commission that includes the following components:

• Window Lunettes. These lunettes, which depict birds, leafy branches, and fruit, were installed in front of tall arched windows in the auditorium and were carved around the same time that the Organ Screen was created. Their carved holes let light and air into the auditorium.

• Proscenium. The proscenium was completed around 1937, after Organ Screen, and was installed on the opposite side of the auditorium. It depicts animals, musical notes, and instruments. A group of carved masks appear to represent Greek, Egyptian, and Mesoamerican theater or dance masks and the words “music” and “drama” are incorporated.

• Louis Braille Lunette. This lunette depicts the inventor of the Braille writing system, Louis Braille. Teachers are shown reading Braille with students. Johnson completed it around 1937, and it was placed over an interior door of the school.

Vocabulary

• Proscenium: Originally an ancient theater stage, now it is the arch that surrounds a stage and separates it from the seating area in a theater.
• Lunette: A crescent-shaped architectural feature usually used to decorate the upper part of a wall or window.
• WPA: Short for Works Progress Administration, this program helped put unemployed people to work building infrastructure, public goods, and art during the Great Depression, which began in 1929. It was part of the U.S. government’s New Deal, which sought to revitalize the economy during the Great Depression. It was renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.
• Secular: A term describing attitudes, activities, or objects that have no religious or spiritual basis.

Questions and Prompts

Communicating through Art

• Which media, techniques, and work processes did Johnson use, and why did he make those choices?
• What did he intend for audiences to see, experience, and think about when viewing his work?
• In your opinion, which are the most successful aspects of his work? Share your reasoning.
• Johnson believed creativity was an essential civic value. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Beauty and the Natural World

• For each component (lunettes, organ screen, and proscenium):
  • Look closely for one full minute. What do you notice first? What do you notice after looking for a while?
  • How does Johnson use the elements of art? How does he use the principles of design?
  • Describe the nature you see.
  • Can you find similarities among all three components? In what ways is the piece you observed unique? what ways is the component you chose to observe similar to the other two? In what ways is it unique?
  • Draw this component with as much detail as possible.
  • Work with a peer or in a group. Each person spends 30 seconds (no more) sketching the important features of the component. After 30 seconds, compare your sketches. What features did you each think were the most important to include? Why?
  • How do the components work together to tell one story? What story do they tell you?

Related Objects

Authors, Contributors, and Reviewers

Coauthors

Victoria Gonzalez is the Digital Learning Specialist at The Huntington.

Rebecca Kon is the former Curriculum Development Specialist at The Huntington.

Contributors

Dennis Carr is the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington.

Lauren Cross is the Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Huntington.

Reviewers

Kim Tulipana is the Associate Director of Public, School, and Digital Programs at The Huntington.

Renee Ergazos is an editor and the Owner and Managing Editor of Foresee Communications LLC.

References

Boland de Marillac, M. L. (1954). History of Holy Family Institute, Holyoke, Massachusetts. Catholic University of America.

California School for the Blind. (n.d.) History of CSB. https://www.csb-cde.ca.gov/about/history/

Carr, D., Francis, J., Bowles, J. P., & Shaw, G. D. (2024). Sargent Claude Johnson. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Locke, A. (1925). The legacy of the ancestral arts. In The new negro: An interpretation (pp. 254–267). Albert and Charles Boni.

Page, T. (2011, April 29). Rare chance to see artworks the Huntington might purchase. The Huntington. https://www.huntington.org/verso/2018/08/rare-chance-see-artworks-huntington-might-purchase

Shaw, G. D. (2012, June 6). Creating a new negro art in America: Relocating Sargent Johnson’s African-inspired art, (108), 75–87. Transition. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/478409

Turner-Lowe, S. (2013, October 11). Monumental and melodious. The Huntington. https://www.huntington.org/verso/2018/08/monumental-and-melodious

Underhill, J. (2019, April 24). Virtual model of a masterful wood carving. The Huntington. https://huntington.org/verso/2019/04/virtual-model-masterful-wood-carving