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Welcome to the official website of The Romare Bearden Foundation. This site offers a wide range of resources and information on the art and life of preeminent African-American artist Romare Bearden.
Please explore our website, sign our e-mail list and learn about who we are and how you can support us. We invite you to visit this site often to learn more about Romare Bearden, one of America's foremost artists. Enjoy!

Photo by Marvin Newman.
Romare Howard Bearden (1911-1988). Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the twentieth century, the artist had a prolific and distinguished career.

The Romare Bearden Foundation was established as a nonprofit organization by the estate of Romare Bearden in 1990, two years after the artist died.
Our Mission
Photo by Frank Stewart
Our memberships provide wonderful benefits and supports our goal to preserve and conserve our local history. Donate to continue Romare Bearden's legacy.
DISCOVER
Our Events
The Romare Bearden Foundation hosts events and fundraisers to promote the arts, and to support their educational programs.
Upcoming Conjur: A Masked Affair, the 2023 Bearden Masquerade benefit. The Bearden Foundation and Powerhouse Arts join forces for a magical evening of dance, fun, and festivities this October to celebrate Bearden’s legacy in American art.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2023
8:00 – 11:00 pm
Powerhouse Arts- 322 Third Avenue, Brooklyn
PAST EVENTS
WATCH
Romare Bearden's Southern Sensibility by Wide Iris Productions
Shop Romare Bearden
In the news
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15 Sep
Fundraiser, CONJUR: A Masked Affair
Read moreJoin us Friday, October 27th, 2023 The Romare Bearden Foundation and Powerhouse Arts will join forces for a magical evening of dance, fun, and
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12 Sep
WPI Webinar Series- Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s
Read moreWPI Webinar Series – Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 1:00 pm ET – Virtual on Zoom And the
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06 Sep
WPI Webinar Series- Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s
Read moreWPI Webinar Series – Race Matters: Cultural Politics in the 1960s Next four Thursdays, starting September 7. 1:00 – 200 pm (EDT) – Virtual on
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24 Jul
Cinque Artists Talk Program: Revisiting the Spiral Group
Read moreRevisiting the Spiral Group- A virtual conversation commemorating the historic gathering Thursday, July 27 2023 6:00 – 7:00 pm (EDT) – Virtual on Zoom/Youtube/Facebook Register
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10 May
Cinque Artists Talk Program: Yolène Legrand
Read moreThursday, May 18, 2023 from 6:00 -7:00 pm – Virtual on Zoom/Youtube/Facebook Free and open to the public. Register for the link through Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/44mrWnc
Quotes
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I think the artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs. When he finds that, he can start to make limitations. And then he really begins to grow.
Romare Bearden -
I felt that the Negro was becoming too much of an abstraction, rather than the reality that art can give a subject.
Romare Bearden, 1964 -
As a Negro I do not need to go looking for happenings, the absurd or the surreal, because I have seen things that neither Dali, Beckett, Ionesco, nor any of the others could have thought possible.
Romare Bearden, 1967 -
It is not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my people as I know it, passionately and dispassionately as Brueghel. My intention is to reveal through pictorial complexities the life I know.
Romare Bearden -
I do not burden myself with the need for complete abstraction or absolute formal purity but I do want my language to be strict and classical, in the manner of the great Benin heads, for example.
Romare Bearden, 1969 -
I paint out of the tradition of the blues.
Romare Bearden, 1980