Negro Mother and Child
- tourdeforcedc
- Apr 17
- 2 min read
1934 sculpture by artist Maurice Glickman (Jewish Romanian, 1906–1981). Courtyard, Interior Department
Wikipedia
Negro Mother and Child is a 1934 sculpture by American artist Maurice Glickman (1906–1981). The New Deal artwork was produced under the early Public Works of Art Project and later installed in a courtyard at the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C.
This sculpture appeared in a Corcoran Gallery exhibition of PWAP artworks in Washington, D.C. President and Mrs. Roosevelt attended the gala opening of the show on Tuesday, April 24, 1934. Edward A. Jewell, the New York Times art critic, called Negro Mother and Child "the exhibition's one outstanding piece of sculpture...a work of remarkable insight and plastic strength."[1] It was one of just 11 sculptures exhibited at the 600-piece exhibition and "unquestionably stole the show."[2]
Reportedly, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw the plaster cast of this sculpture, he said "it ought to be cast in bronze." Someone paid for the bronze casting and sent it to the White House, the White House sent it to the National Gallery of Art, and after a stint in the art galleries of the 1939 New York World's Fair,[3] it arrived to the Interior Building. The statue is located at the east end of the cafeteria courtyard and stands atop a serpentine marble base.[4] The plaster cast went to Howard University Library.[5] The bronze version of the sculpture is featured in the PWAP official report of 1934
Prompts for Closer Look:
Compare this mother and child depiction with other mother-child works covered in this guide, including the Mary and Baby Jesus sculpture in Ed Dwight’s Our Mother of Africa (National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception), and the /Daniel Gillette Olney relief of the mother and two children in “The Progress of the Negro Race.” How are these representations alike and unlike.
What do the mother and children appear to be looking at? Their current challenging predicament, under conditions of poverty and discrimination in the fifth year of the Great Depression? The future and promise of a better day?
Why do you think FDR was so enormously moved by this sculpture that he urged it be cast in bronze?
The “Negro Mother and Child” sculpture, created in 1934 by Jewish-Romanian artist Maurice Glickmen, sits quietly in the courtyard of the Department of the Interior. It depicts a Black mother tenderly holding her child, both figures rendered with a profound sense of strength and dignity. Despite being created durin the Great Depression—a time of profound racial and economic hardship—the sculpture presents Blackness not as a symbol of victimhood, but of resilience and human dignity.
Symbolically, the work confronts issues of race and power by placing the everyday, often overlooked strength of Black women at the center of a federal building. At the same time, its semi-hidden placement within a courtyard, rather than a prominent outdor public space, speaks to how…
The sculpture, "The Negro Mother and Child" created by Maurice Glickman shows the relationship between a black mother and child looking straight ahead almost with and their focus and drive to live through America as a black family, while showing their connection with another showing them so close. My interpretation of this is how strong we see black people and their familial ties largely due to them needing to stick together as a community to navigate in brutal America. In so much historical art it feels like black people in The United States are portrayed as needing protection and being saved by the white man. However anyone who understands the history of black people you know that their main means…
The sculpture of the Negro Mother and Child which lives in the courtyard of the Main Interior Building in Washington, DC. This sculpture was created by Maurice Glickman in 1934. This statue hold a big weight with the topic of race and power, it portrays a standing Black woman crossing her arms around her breast looking out. A child is place in front of her, resting in front of her body. Glickman made show care and strength of a Black mother she stands upright protecting, surviving, and enduring the treatment she received. It's interesting to see that she is not victimized or idealized instead, she is shown as protection and life. She has her child resetting on her legs, signaling…
Maurice Glickman’s sculpture of a Black woman and her son exudes silence and power in a way that had been seldom seen in popular artwork of the time. The mother stands firmly in the background with her arms crossed in a stern and protective manner, her gaze is pointedly fixated on what’s in front of her. Her son displays a similar face but his posture is open and more playful with his hand curved comfortably around his mothers waist. Despite the serious nature of the mother, she still allows her child to stand in front of her, letting the new generation experience the curiosity that comes with youth and is lost to hardship. Their garments are simple and neither are…