September, 2, 1911: Fred Romare Harry Bearden was born in Charlotte, North Carolina to Bessye Johnson Bearden and Richard Howard Bearden.

The Bearden family moves to New York City.

Romare Bearden enrolls at Public School / P.S. 5 on 141st street and Edgecombe Avenue, Harlem, New York. 

Bearden Family settles permanently in Harlem.

Bessye Bearden elected to New York City School Board No.15

Bearden Completes P.S. 139 and enters DeWitt Clinton High School on 116th Street in New York.

Eugene Bailey, a young Pittsburgh neighbor, gives Romare Bearden drawing lessons in the Summer before he turns 15- years-old.

Romare Bearden and his grandparents move to East Liberty, Pittsburgh in 1927.  He graduates from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh in 1929.

Romare Bearden graduates from Peabody High School in 1929 and enrolls at Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania.

Bearden transfers from Lincoln University to Boston University for two years and takes many art courses. He becomes a star pitcher on a varsity baseball team.

Bearden meets Elmer Simms Campbell, the first black cartoonist for publications such as Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and New Yorker.

Bearden transfers from Boston University to New York University and does cartoon illustrations for NYU publication, The Medley.

Bearden produces political cartoons for The Crisis, activist journal sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

His cartoon was published inside the February 24, 1934 issue of Collier’s Magazine. He signs it Howard Bearden, Jr.

Bearden graduates from New York University with a Bachelor of Science in Education.

Bearden publishes weekly cartoons in The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper from September 1935 until May 1937.

Bearden participates in his first group exhibition of sculpture and paintings, presented by the Art Committee of the Labor Club from February 12, 1939 to March 12, 1939.

Bearden has his first solo exhibition on May 4^th to 11^th at 306 141st Street. Romare Bearden: Oils, Gouaches, Watercolors, and Drawings from 1937 to 1940.  The exhibition included seven oil paintings, six gouaches, five watercolors, and five drawings.

Bearden moves his studio to 243 West 125th Street, Apollo Theater building. He has a group exhibition  from October 16th  to November 7th.

Produced by McMillen, Inc,. New York, Negro Art: Contemporary,  Bearden showcases The Visitation and Woman Picking Cotton.

Other artists include Eldzier Cortor, Joseph Delaney, William H. Johnson, Norman Lewis.

Selections from art critic Frank Crowninshield’s African sculpture collection on display in adjoining gallery.

Bearden enlists as private in army in April. Assigned to First Headquarters, Fifteenth Regiment, all black 372nd Infantry Division. Regiment transferred from Fort Dix, New Jersey to Harlem to guard New York City subways against sabotage.

He has a group exhibition from January 3rd to the 31st, at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, entitled Time-Life-Fortune Exhibit: Manpower. He showcases Factory Workers; 1942, gouache that was previously published as frontispiece for “The Negro’s War” in June 1942 issue of Fortune.

On September 16, Bessye Bearden dies suddenly from pneumonia.

Bearden meets Samuel M. Kootz. Kootz has a newly established gallery that represents William Baziotes, George Byron Browne, Alexander Calder, Adolf Gottlieb, Carl Holty, Fernand Leger, Robert Motherwell. Bearden joins gallery stable, which holds monthly meetings to discuss art and aesthetics.

Bearden publishes “The Negro’s Artist’s Dilemma” in Critique: A Review of Contemporary Art; and criticizes Harmon Foundation for fostering mediocre African-American art.

Bearden begins long correspondence about art with Carl Holty, University of Georgia, Athens. It eventually leads him to joint authorship of The Painter’s Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting later in life in 1969.

Bearden takes leave from Department of Social Services and travels to Paris under GI Bill of Rights. He studies philosophy with Gaston Bachelard at Sorbonne and French at Britannique Institute. He also studies Buddhism.

Romare Bearden and Dave Ellis found Bluebird Music Company.

Returns to work at New York City Department of Social Services.

Bearden marries model, dancer, and choreographer Nanette Rohan on September 4th. They met at New York benefit for hurricane victims from the West Indies. They live with Bearden’s father in apartment on Morningside Drive.

Becomes member of American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Bearden moves with Nanette to loft at 357 Canal Street Manhattan, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Gallery owners Arne Ekstrom and Michel Warren visit Bearden’s studio, express interest in showing new work.

Cedric Dover’s American Negro Art, published by New York Graphic Society, includes Romare Bearden’s Untitled, He is Arisen.

Daniel Cordier and Michel Warren, Inc., later renamed Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, represents Romare Bearden until his death.

Bearden invites artists to meet at his Canal Street studio to discuss political events related to civil rights and plight of blacks in America. They were called “Spiral,” and the group seeked to answer question “What is Black Art?” They rent space on Christopher Street and begin to meet weekly, plan exhibitions, and make arrangements for attending march on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr., in August.

Active in founding of Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.

Bearden retires from Department of Social Services to work full-time in studio and in March he publishes “Rectangular Structure in My Montage Paintings” in Leonardo, a journal published by International Society for Arts, Science, and Technology.

Cinque Gallery founded by artists Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Ernest Crichlow.
The Gallery’s mission was to exhibit African-American artists, to educate the public about their work, and to offer art programs to the community.

One of fifty founding members of the Black Academy of Arts and letters, designed to “define, preserve, promote and develop the arts and letters of black people.”

Solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual. Retrospective of fifty six works travels to National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C. and several national venues.

Elected sixth president, board of directors, of the Harlem Cultural Council. Six Black Masters of American Art by Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson was published by Zenith Books and examines the work of Duncanson, Johnson, Lawrence, Pippin, Savage, and Tanner.

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Bearden is appointed to three-year term on American Academy of Arts and Letters & National Institute of Arts and Letters Awards for Art Committee.

He awarded an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.

The Arts of Romare Bearden : The Prevalence of Ritual by M. Bunch Washington, published by Harry N. Abrams in November.

Designs cover for Harvard Advocate, vol. 107, no. 4, special issue, Black Odyssey: A Search for Home.

Designs Spring Festival, tapestry published by Modern Master Tapestries, Inc., New York

Bearden became a consultant to Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library and focused on acquisition of artworks. He produces Recollection Pond with Pace Editions & Gloria Ross Tapestries, New York.

Awarded Gold Medal for achievements in the arts by the Governor of North Carolina.

The Street (composition for Richard Wright) was published in New York Times in April.

Bearden gives commencement speech and receives Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore.

Receives Honorary Doctorate from North Carolina Central University, Durham.

Presentation of Carol Jenkins’ interview, “Profile of Romare Bearden,” on “Positively Black,” WNBC-TV, channel 4 on October 13th.

Approximately thirty New York cityscapes in watercolor executed for opening credits of John Cassavetes’ film Gloria.

October 22nd proclaimed Romare Bearden Day, in Oakland California.

Bearden attends reception at White House on January 6th for the celebration of print publication Presidential Portfolio. And it includes his Pepper Jelly Lady from 1980.

Bearden’s etching Sunday Morning at Avila commissioned to commemorate eighty fifth birthday of composer Virgil Thomson for Carnegie Hall performance of Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts on November 13th.

Bearden’s mural for Howard University, Washington D.C., unveiled.

National Academy of Design, screening of film, Bearden Plays Bearden by Billie Allen Henderson and Nelson Breen on May 24th.

Bearden lectures about influence of jazz on his work.

Bearden illustrates A Visit to the Country, children’s book by Herschel Johnson, published by Harper and Row in 1989.

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Romare Bearden dies on March 12th.

Memorial service at Cathedral of St. John the Divine on April 6th. Derek Walcott, Ralph Ellison, and Mary Schmidt Campbell, Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City, speak at service. An exhibition of works by Romare Bearden is installed at the Cathedral.

In May, Nanette, his wife, accepts for her husband posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award from the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Harry N. Abrams, New York publishes Romare Bearden His Life & Art. By Myron Schwartzman. Foreword by August Wilson. Tracing Romare Bearden’s odyssey – from his birth in North Carolina to his youth in Harlem and Pittsburgh, as a student in Paris, and his return to New York – the book illuminates not only the life but the art in full color illustrations, and including interviews with the author and artist.

Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden. The retrospective exhibition of 141 works opens at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, on April 14th. The exhibition travels until 1993 to national venues including: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Wight Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Catalogue.

Pantheon Books, New York, publishes A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, co-written by Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson who together dedicated many years to researching and writing this comprehensive survey of African-American art.

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Mural, City of Glass, based on 1982 maquette, installed at East Tremont Avenue and Williamsburg Road (elevated) Station, Bronx, Metropolitan Transit Authority, New York.