exhibitions | news
Museum Façade | Allan Rohan Crite:
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
In October I am honored to continue my fortuitous association with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Having been an Artist-in-Residence in March, this time my connection involves the present exhibition, “Allan Rohan Crite – Urban Glory”, available to view through January 19, 2026.
As the museum’s website explains, “Allan Rohan Crite (1910–2007) was not simply an artist. As a community elder, writer, civic leader, and griot, or storyteller, he was a quiet radical who reveled in the beauty of everyday life and created art that glorified the Black community.”
As part of the tribute to Allan Crite, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum commissioned me to create a Façade Painting. As the museum’s website expresses it, “Freeman paints the artist as larger-than-life, surrounded by smaller figures taken from a combination of paintings by Crite of street scenes of Boston’s Lower Roxbury and South End neighborhoods… Freeman imbues Crite with the same dignity and glory he spent his life giving his beloved city.”
And speaking of, “larger-than-life,” I had the unique experience of seeing my artwork reproduced and mounted to the Gardner’s Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade at an impressive 16 x 36 feet, covering a substantial portion of the museum’s four stories.
As a man whose artistic skills and dedication to his community, including being a history keeper and anti-gentrification activist, were long overdue recognition, I highly encourage you to visit the exhibit. And I appreciate the Gardner’s level of detail in not only presenting his work but detailing his life story. This includes revealing the results of infrared imaging of one of his paintings and how this contributes to our understanding of his technique and approach to his subjects. The museum will also be hosting, “The Street is Memory” a discussion of Crite’s anti-gentrification activism and today’s continuing efforts to, as Crite put it, resist Boston’s “Urban Removal”.
I am honored to be a part of this recognition of a significant local artist and hope that you can attend the exhibit.
~Robert Freeman
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Artist-in-Residence:
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
For the month of March, 2025, I had the rare and prestigious honor of being an Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The Artist-in-Residence program was launched in 1992 to help reshape the institution and recapture the vitality that was present during Isabella’s lifetime. Artists are invited to live, think, and work at the museum.
I was given full access to the holdings and the archives, along with support from the curators, conservators, and staff. It’s an amazing experience to express an interest in a particular artist and their work, and immediately have examples shown to me that are on display, as well as additional work retrieved from the museum’s archives, along with detailed biographical information and even the artist’s personal correspondence. While program participants are not required to produce anything, I found both the change from my usual schedule, and being surrounded by the incredible works on display, as well as the physical beauty of the Isabella Stewart Gardner’s home and museum, inspiring.
In my present paintings I take a direct approach to the canvas, and I do not make preliminary sketches. But having 24-hour access to the museum, including the astonishing beauty of the courtyard’s architecture, artwork and plantings, I was inspired to return to a different style of work from much earlier in my artistic education and career. I found myself doing pencil sketches and gouache paintings on paper in an attempt to capture the vitality of the environment I was so fortunate to be living in.
I wish to thank the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the incredible people who work there, for an amazing experience. It was truly a retreat from the world, where I could think about my next series of work, while I lived in a place where the most impressive paintings in the world are housed.
I am still trying to figure out exactly how this experience will affect my painting and how I see the world of art. Sometimes, it takes a long time to examine and digest an experience, and to understand what the experience did to you. What is clear, is that it has already had an effect and will continue to do so and that I am so thankful for the opportunity. ~Robert Freeman
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You can see more details about ongoing exhibitions by viewing our recent email update. Please subscribe to my mailing list to be included in future invitations and news.
~Robert Freeman