Recent Acquisitions

Frances Arnold born 1956
Born Edgewood, Pennsylvania

Frances Arnold is the first American woman to have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2018). She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, and the Director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at the California Institute of Technology, where she has been a faculty member since 1986. At Caltech, she has pioneered methods of directed protein evolution that are used to make proteins for applications in alternative energy, chemicals, and medicine. Additionally, Arnold has co-founded three companies in order to magnify the impact of her methods.

Arnold has been elected to all three National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. This likeness of Arnold was created by Katy Grannan, who is known for her portraits and editorial work for the New York Times and other publications.

Katy Grannan (born 1969)
Pigment print, 2018

Lin-Manuel Miranda born 1980
Born New York City

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a groundbreaking composer, playwright, and actor. He is the creator and original star of Broadway’s Hamilton: An American Musical (2015), which won eleven Tony Awards, a Grammy Award, and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. Inspired by Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, the production mixes history and freestyle rap—an approach Miranda pioneered in his first musical, In the Heights (1999). While some scholars have criticized Hamilton for glossing over slavery, Miranda’s artistic vision, infused with hip-hop and the contemporary ethos of multiethnic representation, has earned him a place in the history of American theater. Moreover, following Hurricane Maria in September 2017, he created the benefit single “Almost Like Praying” to support relief efforts in Puerto Rico.

This portrait of Miranda, in costume for his title role in Hamilton, is one of several photographs that Mark Seliger took for the June 2016 cover story of Rolling Stone.

Mark Seliger (born 1959)
Archival pigment print, 2016 (printed 2018)
Acquisition made possible through the Smithsonian
Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center /  © 2016, Mark Seliger

Untitled
Jeffrey P. Bezos born 1964
Born Albuquerque, New Mexico

Jeffrey P. Bezos is the founder of Amazon, a global technology company that helped revolutionize the retail industry, and Blue Origin, whose mission is to lower the cost of access to outer space with reusable launch vehicles. In 1994, after working for several years as a computer scientist on Wall Street, Bezos developed the business plan for Amazon.com, an online bookseller. Today, in addition to selling hundreds of millions of items, the company streams movies and TV shows on Prime Video, and provides cloud-computing infrastructure through Amazon Web Services. Amazon also created the Kindle, Fire TV, and Echo devices, as well as the Alexa voice recognition service. Bezos was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999. He has owned the Washington Post since 2013.

The artist Robert McCurdy, who based this portrait on a photograph of Bezos, worked over a period of eighteen months to portray the subject in such meticulous detail.

Robert McCurdy (born 1952)
Oil on canvas, 2019
Acquired through the generosity of Tom Alberg; Purvi Patel Albers and Bill Albers; John Seely Brown; Anonymous donors; John and Ann Doerr; Jamie Gorelick; Judy McGrath; Jon Rubinstein and Karen Richardson; Fred and Genny Ryan; Thomas and Darlene Ryder; Patricia Stonesifer; Wendell P. Weeks and Kim Frock Weeks

Anna Wintour, New York City, 2015
Anna Wintour born 1949
Born London, England

Anna Wintour has been the editor in chief of Vogue since 1988 and was named artistic director of Condé Nast in 2013. As the host of the famed Met Gala, she has raised more than $200 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Wintour has received numerous awards for her leadership and charitable efforts, including the Council of Fashion Designers of America Lifetime Achievement Award and the Award of Courage for AIDS Research from the American Foundation for AIDS Research. In October 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Wintour to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. She was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her service to British journalism and fashion by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017.

The sitting for this portrait by Annie Leibovitz took place in Wintour’s New York City apartment, where her aesthetic sensibility is reflected in the objects surrounding her.

Annie Leibovitz (born 1949)
Archival pigment print, 2015 (printed 2019)
Acquired through the generosity of Randi Charno Levine/ © Annie Leibovitz

Earth, Wind & Fire
Front row, left to right: Verdine White, Maurice
White, Johnny Graham; middle row: Ralph Johnson,
Philip Bailey, Larry Dunn; top row: Andrew Woolfolk,
Fred White, Al McKay

Under the leadership of founder and principal singer Maurice White (1941–2016), the band Earth, Wind & Fire developed a lush, horn-driven sound that fused elements of jazz, funk, R&B, and gospel. With chart-topping hits, such as “Shining Star” (1975), “September” (1978), and “Boogie Wonderland” (1979), the band sold more than ninety million albums worldwide (including fifty Gold and Platinum albums), received seven Grammy Awards, and secured a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

Commissioned to create a portrait of Earth, Wind & Fire in 1978, photographer Bruce Talamon wanted to represent the band’s members as superheroes. Shooting from a low vantage point, he photographed each of the nine musicians individually. He then laboriously assembled the portraits (working without the benefit of Photoshop, which did not exist in 1978) to yield a seamless, composite image. This heroic group portrait was the result.

Bruce W. Talamon (born 1949)
Inkjet print, 1978 (printed 2019)
Acquired through the generosity of Randi Charno Levine / © Bruce W. Talamon

Indra Nooyi born 1955
Born Chennai, India

Indra Nooyi is an internationally recognized business executive who served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo for over a decade. After positions with companies such as the Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and ABB, Nooyi joined PepsiCo in 1994. She became CEO in 2006, and led the company through 2018. During her tenure, PepsiCo was guided by “Performance with Purpose”—a philosophy focused on consumers, employees, the communities PepsiCo serves, and the planet. Under her leadership, the company also transformed its portfolio by reducing the sugar, fat, and salt content of its products. She emphasized diversity and inclusion and spearheaded the creation of programs to facilitate work-life balance for employees. Nooyi was included on Fortune magazine’s annual list of “Most Powerful Women” for eighteen years and has received similar recognition in Forbes magazine.

Her portraitist, Jon R. Friedman, is renowned for his carefully observed paintings of figures in the worlds of science, technology, and business.

Jon R. Friedman (born 1947)
Oil on canvas, 2019
Acquired through the generosity of Blair and Cheryl
Effron; the Jane and Alan Batkin Foundation; the
Yale School of Management; the Koch Ellis Fund; the
Robert and Carol Wolf Foundation; and PepsiCo, Inc.

Paul Taylor 1930–2018
Born Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania

Paul Taylor fueled the creative growth of midcentury modern American dance as both a performer and a groundbreaking choreographer. He capped his studies with pioneers Martha Graham, José Limón, and Doris Humphrey by joining Merce Cunningham’s dance company (1953–54) and performing as a soloist with Graham’s troupe (1955–62). In 1954, he formed the ensemble that became the Paul Taylor Dance Company, serving as its director, choreographer, and principal dancer.

While his early, abstract compositions often puzzled audiences and critics alike, Taylor achieved a breakthrough with Aureole (1962) by pairing unmistakably modern movement with a score by Handel. His subsequent works explored a wide range of themes, from love and nature to the brutality of war. When Taylor retired from performing in 1974, his focus shifted solely to choreography. Among his masterworks is Esplanade (1975), in which the dancers run, skip, and jump in “an explosion of joy and athleticism.”

Jack Mitchell (1925–2013)
Gelatin silver print, 1964 / © 1966 Jack Mitchell

Rubén Salazar 1928–1970
Born Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Rubén Salazar became one of the first Latino journalists to work for mainstream English-language media when the Los Angeles Times hired him in 1959.Between 1965 and 1968, he worked as a foreign correspondent in the Dominican Republic and in Vietnam, and then as bureau chief in Mexico City. Concurrently, the Chicano Movement emerged in the United States, where Mexican Americans challenged the structural racism that limited their opportunities for education and employment and made them prone to police discrimination.

Summoned back to Los Angeles, Salazar reported on the movement, validating its grievances and goals. Eventually, he became director of the Spanish speaking TV station KMEX but remained a part-time columnist for the Times.

On August 29, 1970, while covering the Chicano Moratorium—an anti-Vietnam War march and the largest Mexican American rally to date—Salazar was killed by a police-fired tear gas canister. Many consider him a martyr to the movement.

Rupert García (born 1941)
Acrylic on canvas, 1970
Conserved with federal support through the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center / © Rupert García

Cindy Sherman born 1954
Born Glen Ridge, New Jersey

By deftly combining performance art with photography, Cindy Sherman continues to create a highly imaginative and provocative body of work. She first drew notice for her Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), a series of black and white photographs that feature the artist in the guise of a B-movie actress. Throughout her subsequent work, Sherman has probed the nature of identity and representation by casting herself in multiple roles and transforming her appearance with the aid of wigs, makeup, prosthetics, costumes, props, and settings.

Robert Mapplethorpe photographed Sherman in preparation for his book 50 New York Artists: A Critical Selection of Painters and Sculptors Working in New York (1986). Sherman’s inclusion, alongside established artists such as Willem de Kooning and Louise Bourgeois, signaled her rising stature within a community of artists whose work came to define much of American art in the 1970s and 1980s.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989)
Gelatin silver print, 1983/ © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

Morgan Freeman born 1937
Born Memphis, Tennessee

Handsome, lanky, and known for his sonorous voice, Morgan Freeman is among the most distinguished contemporary actors of stage and screen. Since his New York City theatrical debut in 1967, Freeman has repeatedly won praise for his performances both on and off Broadway. He appeared as “Easy Reader” in the popular PBS children’s show The Electric Company (1971–76) and later made a seamless transition to film in Brubaker (1980). Returning to the stage as chauffeur Hoke Colburn in the 1987 off-Broadway hit Driving Miss Daisy, Freeman reprised the role in the popular 1989 movie adaptation.

His other memorable films have included the Civil War drama Glory (1989), the cult classic The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Million Dollar Baby (2004), for which he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2009, Freeman fulfilled a longtime dream by starring as Nelson Mandela in Invictus, a biographical drama about the South African activist and president.

Jérôme De Perlinghi (born 1961)
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print, 1997
Acquired through the generosity of Rosa Gobien/ © Jérôme De Perlinghi 

Jorge Soto Sánchez 1947–1987
Born New York City

Multi-media artist Jorge Soto Sánchez is recognized for fusing African and Caribbean motifs. Born amidst the urban precariousness of El Barrio, East Harlem, Soto Sánchez took refuge in art throughout his childhood. In 1971, he became involved with the artists and activists of El Taller Boricua, who advocated for the socio-political and cultural empowerment of Nuyoricans. Soto Sánchez promoted his Puerto Rican heritage by combining Taíno and Afro-Caribbean iconographies and reinterpreting paintings by Puerto Rican masters José Campeche (1751–1809) and Francisco Oller (1833–1917). By visually linking themselves to their ancestral roots, Soto Sánchez and members of El Taller sought to assert and celebrate their hybrid identities as diasporic Puerto Ricans.

Gilberto Hernández made this poster for Soto Sánchez’s last major exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, an institution that, like El Taller, grew out of grassroots efforts to display Nuyorican art.

Gilberto Hernández (1945–1985)
Screenprint, 1979
Gift of the Gilberto Cárdenas Collection of Latino Art, in honor of Angelo Falcón, 1951–2018/ © Gilbert Hernandez

Masazumi Chaya born 1947
Born Fukuoka, Japan

For more than four decades, Masazumi Chaya has played a vital role in the success of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He joined the company in 1972 and performed as a principal dancer for fifteen years before transitioning to the post of rehearsal director in 1988. An invaluable assistant to Ailey himself, Chaya became the company’s associate artistic director in 1991—two years after the founder’s death.

Since then, he has served as the troupe’s standard-bearer and master teacher, preserving Alvin Ailey’s artistic vision by schooling new generations of dancers in Ailey’s original works. First teaching dances precisely as conceived and choreographed by Ailey, he then delights in challenging dancers to make the works their own. By also staging Ailey ballets with dance companies throughout the United States, Chaya has extended Alvin Ailey’s influence far beyond the confines of the company that bears his name.

Jack Mitchell (1925–2013)
Gelatin silver print, 1979 / © 1966 Jack Mitchell

Wilma Rudolph 1940–1994
Born Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee

Eleven seconds flat. That is the time it took for Wilma Rudolph to reach victory in the 100-meter sprint and claim Olympic gold at the 1960 Summer Games in Rome. The twenty-year-old sprinter, known as “Skeeter,” had overcome tremendous odds to reach the pinnacle in her sport. As a child, Rudolph endured a series of devastating illnesses that left her with a partially paralyzed left leg. After a brace, an orthopedic shoe, and years of therapy, she not only regained full use of her leg but also emerged as a lightning-fast runner.

With her stellar performances in the 100- and 200-meter sprints and the 400-meter relay in Rome, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field events in a single Olympics. When she later refused to participate in a segregated victory celebration in Clarksville, Tennessee, the festivities became that town’s first integrated functions.

Tony Vaccaro (born 1922)
Gelatin silver print, 1962 (printed 1975)
Gift of Monah L. Gettner / © Tony Vaccaro

Michael Tilson Thomas born 1944
Born Los Angeles, California

Michael Tilson Thomas is best known as the “trailblazing” music director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), which he has led since 1995 and from which he plans to retire in 2020. Under his leadership, the SFS has “helped redefine the role and repertory of America’s top orchestras...and exploded the myth of an industry dominated by venerable East Coast ensembles.”

Admired for engaging new audiences through adventurous programming and innovative outreach efforts, Tilson Thomas has succeeded in championing the work of both contemporary American composers, such as John Cage and John Adams, and earlier masters, such as Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky. Tilson Thomas’s recordings with the SFS have garnered multiple Grammy Awards, including those for Best Orchestral Performance and Best Classical Album. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2010 and has earned several other prestigious distinctions.

Jérôme De Perlinghi (born 1961)
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print, 1999
Acquired through the generosity of Robert and Jan Newman / © Jérôme De Perlinghi 

Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup 1808–c.1863
Born Minerva, New York

Solomon Northup was a freeborn farmer, landowner, and violinist in Hebron, New York, when he signed on as a musician with a traveling circus act. His supposed employers were actually kidnappers, however, who pretended he was a fugitive slave. After being auctioned at a slave market in New Orleans in June 1841, Northup endured twelve years of tremendous hardship and cruelty before finally regaining his freedom in January 1853. He recounted his horrific experience in abolitionist lectures and in his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, which made him a celebrity and provided the basis for an Academy Award-winning film (2013).

Nathaniel Orr (1822–1908)
Engraving, 1854

Andy García born 1956
Born Havana, Cuba

In the early 1980s, the Cuban American actor Andy García began landing film roles, but during that time, he was often cast to play criminals. He soon grew weary of typecasting and pushed for better representation of Latinos in the entertainment industry. To that end, he acted in Stand and Deliver (1988), an award-winning film that tells the true story of the Bolivian American math teacher Jaime Escalante (1930–2010), who leads a group of Hispanic students to pass a rigorous Advanced Placement exam. García claimed Hollywood star status after playing Vincent Mancini in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III (1990), for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

In collaboration with Tico Torres, Alexis RodríguezDuarte captured García on the set of Night Falls on Manhattan (1996). The photograph is part of their series Cuba Out of Cuba, which has documented prominent Cuban exiles for nearly three decades.

Alexis Rodríguez-Duarte (born 1962), in collaboration with Tico Torres (born 1961)
Gelatin silver print, 1995 (printed 2016)
Acquisition made possible through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center/ © Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte

Philip Glass born 1937
Born Baltimore, Maryland

The iconic composer Philip Glass has written operas, symphonies, chamber music, theatrical and film scores, and other choral and instrumental compositions. Glass trained at the Julliard School and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. However, he rejected traditional compositional styles after transcribing the work of sitar player Ravi Shankar into Western notation.

Glass has been characterized as a minimalist due to his use of slowly evolving cycles of rhythmic pattern. By contrast, he defines his own work as “music with repetitive structures.” His restless exploration of musical form characterizes his compositions for solo instruments and large ensembles alike. Fond of multimedia presentations, Glass has worked with the dancer Twyla Tharp and the playwright and librettist Robert Wilson. He has received many accolades, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 2018. This painting by Luis Alvarez Roure is a study for a larger portrait of Glass at work in his studio.

Luis Alvarez Roure (born 1976)
Oil on Masonite, 2016
Anonymous gift / © 2018 Luis Alvarez Roure

Eddie N. Williams 1932–2017
Born Memphis, Tennessee

Eddie N. Williams was president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation’s leading Black think tank, from 1972 to 2004. Under his leadership, the organization became the preeminent source for research on the state of Black America. Throughout his tenure, Williams’s activism helped pave the way for equality in higher education, jobs, housing, and voting rights.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies commissioned artist Simmie Knox to honor Williams’s contributions with this portrait. A leading portraitist of trailblazing African Americans, Knox was also the first African American painter to receive a commission for official White House portraits. His likenesses of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were both unveiled in 2004.

Simmie Knox (born 1935)
Oil on linen, 2007
Gift of the Eddie N. Williams Family Collection, Jearline F. Williams, donor/ © 2007 Simmie Knox

William P. Foster 1919–2010
Born Kansas City, Kansas

Replacing militaristic formations with high-stepping, dynamic routines, William P. Foster (standing, center) transformed the world of collegiate marching bands while serving more than half a century as director of Florida A&M University’s famed “Marching 100.” When he took the baton at FAMU in 1946, the historically Black college’s band had only sixteen members. Undeterred, Foster christened the ensemble the “Marching 100” and set about growing its membership to triple digits as well as making it the equal of any band in the country.

Foster’s innovations included introducing popular music into the marching band’s repertoire, choreographing high-energy, dance-like moves, and creating dazzling, on-field formations during half-time performances. Under his direction, the “Marching 100” wowed audiences with marching cadences that ranged from one step every three seconds to six steps in a single second. Today, the innovative performance style pioneered by Foster continues to inspire high school and collegiate bands throughout the nation.

Slade’s Studio Photography (active 1941–1974)
Gelatin silver print, 1968
Gift of Dr. William P. and Mary Ann Foster Foundation, Anthony F. Foster, son of Dr. William P. and Mrs. Mary Foster

Leon Gorman 1947–2015
Born Nashua, New Hampshire

During his thirty-four years as president of L.L.Bean, Leon Gorman dramatically expanded and modernized the clothing and outdoor equipment business that his grandfather established in 1912. Shepherding the company through a succession of state-of-the-art innovations, he transferred its catalogue mailing list to a computerized database in the 1970s, introduced a toll-free number for shopping by phone in 1985, and launched internet sales in 1995. Yet even while transforming L.L.Bean into a techsavvy, billion-dollar enterprise, Gorman adhered to the 100 percent customer satisfaction policy that had guided his grandfather’s development of the now-iconic rubber-soled boot. In Gorman’s view, “Customer service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.”

Gorman was equally dedicated to preserving the forests and lakes where he fly-fished and hiked with his dogs. The National Park Foundation and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy are among several environmental groups that have benefited from his support.

Jon R. Friedman (born 1947)
Oil on prepared paper, 2014
Gift of the artist, Jon R. Friedman

Michael Bennett 1943–1987
Born Buffalo, New York

Michael Bennett’s star shone brightly in a brilliant but all-too-brief career. Regarded as one of Broadway’s most innovative directors and choreographers, Bennett excelled at making dance an integral part of each production’s plotline. In the early 1960s, he danced in the choruses of several Broadway musicals before turning to choreography in 1966. After a string of nominations for his work in productions such as Promises, Promises (1968), Coco (1969), and Company (1970), Bennett won his first Tony Awards in 1972 for choreography and best direction of a musical for Follies (1971).

Drawing on his own experience and that of performers he had worked with, he began developing a show about dancers auditioning for coveted slots in the chorus of a new musical. The result was the runaway hit A Chorus Line (1975). Bennett scored another success with the musical Dreamgirls (1981) before succumbing to an AIDS-related illness at the age of forty-four.

Jack Mitchell (1925–2013)
Gelatin silver print, 1966/ © 1966 Jack Mitchell 

Marvin Miller 1917–2012
Born Bronx, New York

As executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966 to 1983, Marvin Miller forged one of the nation’s strongest unions and sparked transformative changes to Major League Baseball. Hired by the MLBPA to bargain for increased pension benefits, he masterminded a series of initiatives that wrested power from team owners and gave players greater control over their careers.

Miller negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in professional sports in 1968, and two years later, he secured the right for players to bring grievances before an impartial arbitrator. This laid the groundwork for a successful challenge to the reserve clause in baseball contracts that had tied players to their teams in near perpetuity. After the independent arbitrator invalidated the reserve clause in 1975—a decision affirmed in federal court—Miller engineered a compromise with management in the next collective bargaining agreement that brought free agency to Major League Baseball.

Ray Fisher (born 1924)
Gelatin silver print, 1973
Gift of Peter D. Miller, son of Marvin J. Miller / © Ray Fisher

Patricia Mernone born 1940
Born Washington, D.C.

Among the first women to compete against men on the American sports car racing circuit, Patricia Mernone blazed a trail in the 1960s during her brief but significant career. She began racing as a twentyone-year-old graduate student in organic chemistry. Within three years, she had won seventy percent of her events, securing two regional championships, a northeast division championship, and a new track record at the Virginia International Raceway.

As the first woman to win a Washington regional championship, Mernone was invited in 1964 to the inaugural American Road Race of Champions in Riverside, California—making her the first female driver to vie for a national title. Although sports writers invariably dwelled on Mernone’s physical attractiveness, they also acknowledged that her surprisingly aggressive driving style and bold maneuvers made her more than a match for male competitors. Her beauty and fierce determination come through in this sketch for an oil painting.

Norman Rockwell (1894–1978)
Graphite and charcoal on paper, 1968

Audrey Hepburn 1929–1993
Born Brussels, Belgium

Whether playing a princess or a bookstore clerk, Audrey Hepburn epitomized elegance and grace. Despite a difficult youth in Nazi-occupied Holland, two failed marriages, and prolonged periods of selfdoubt, she projected an effortless poise onscreen and in public, as well as a doe-eyed impishness that made her a leading box-office star. At a time when women were often cast as the love interests of male leads, Hepburn insisted on playing central characters. As Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)—with her large sunglasses, oversize cigarette holder, and little black Givenchy dress—she became a trendsetting icon for a new generation of American women.

During the last five years of her life, Hepburn shifted her focus to the plight of suffering children around the globe. In 1992, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Benny Stilling (active c.1940–1969)
Color lithograph, 1962

Ernest Everett Just 1883–1941
Born Charleston, South Carolina

One of the most brilliant American scientists of his generation, Ernest Everett Just graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1907 and earned his doctorate in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1916. While serving on the faculty of Howard University from 1907 to 1941, Just devoted many summers to experimental research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His studies of fertilization and early development in marine invertebrates yielded a host of groundbreaking discoveries that overturned widely accepted theories. Despite the significance of Just’s work, racial prejudice prevented his full acceptance into the American scientific community. European scientists welcomed him, however, and he spent much of his later career conducting research abroad.

In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service featured Just in its Black Heritage stamp series. This drawing of the scientist at work was created for the envelopes that the Postal Service produced to commemorate the stamp’s first day of issue.

Unidentified artist
Ink and gouache on paper, 1996