HName:  McElroy, Guy C.

DateBorn:  1946

Placeborn:  Fairmount, WV

Datedied: 1990

Placedied: Washington, DC

HDescrip:  Scholar of African-American art. McElroy was the son of Geraldine McElroy, he spent his youth in Fairmont, WV.  He earned an M. A. in art history from the University of Cincinnati in 1972.  After working as a Rockefeller Fellow in museum studies at the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco between 1974-1975, he earned a second M. A. in mass communication followed from Emerson College in Boston in 1975.  In 1978 he moved to Washington, DC where he served as curator and then assistant director at the Bethune Museum-Archive.  He became adjunct curator at the Corcoran Museum in 1986.  Studying the work of William Sydney Mount, he realized the need to examine the representation of blacks in American art.  The following year, however, McElroy was severely injured in an auto accident in New Mexico which left him a paraplegic, requiring a wheelchair for mobility.  He nevertheless enter the University of Maryland to gain his Ph.D.  In 1990, McElroy mounted the important exhibition, "Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940" with Corcoran chief curator Jane Livingston.  He suffered a pulmonary embolism three years later at age 44 and died.

McElroy's catalog and show was groundbreaking because of it addressed the politics of black life in American society, examining the ways in which art reinforced stereotypes of African-Americans.

HCountry:  United States

HBiography:  Glueck, Grace.  "Guy McElroy, Art Historian, 44; Organized Show on Black Images." New York Times June 5, 1990, p. D30.

HBibliography:  and Powell, Richard, and Patton, Sharon. African-American Artists, 1880-1987: Selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution/University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1989; Facing History: the Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940. San Francisco: Bedford Arts Publishers/Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990.