Images of key figures in 20th-century African-American history are on view in the Yale University Art Gallery's newest exhibition, "Portraiture and the Harlem Renaissance: James Latimer Allen," which opens Tuesday, Jan. 19, and continues through Sunday, April 11.

The show includes 50 works by Allen, the African-American artist-photographer whose portrayal of the black elite in the 1920s and 1930s helped to enforce the image of the "New Negro." Organized by Camara Dia Holloway, a doctoral student in the history of art, the exhibition offers visitors the opportunity both to discover the work of a now-neglected photographer and to learn about the values, lives and achievements of some of the century's most influential African Americans.

In his 1988 book "Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance," Cary D. Wintz writes: "The Harlem Renaissance was basically a psychology -- a state of mind or an attitude -- shared by a number of black writers and intellectuals who centered their activities around Harlem in the late 1920s and 1930s. These men and women shared little but a consciousness that they were participants in a new awakening of black culture in the United States. ..."

The people whom Allen photographed at his portrait studio included both famous individuals and those who are less well-known. The former included the poets Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, educator and writer W.E.B. DuBois, actor Paul Robeson and scientist and Howard University professor Ernest E. Just. Among the latter were the National Urban League's Charles Johnson and Ira De Augustine Reid; physicist Elmer Imes and his wife, the author Nella Larsen; actress Rose McClendon; socialite Casca Bonds; singer Taylor Gordon; and bibliophile Arthur A. Schomburg, founder of the Schomburg Collection.

In all of his portraits, Allen combined the tradition of European visual representation with the "stylish sartorial elegance so prized by African-American society at all levels," says Holloway. Even the images of anonymous models that Allen created for advertisements or illustrations in black periodicals were "confident representations of racial beauty and family pride," she says.

In fact, in 1928, Langston Hughes wrote: "So few of the younger Negro artists in any line care about bringing to light the beauties that are particularly racial ... Mr. Allen does desire to do this, to capture beauty and to glorify the Negro."

The images in "Portraiture and the Harlem Renaissance" were drawn from the archives of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, and the National Archives at the Library of Congress.

Complementing the exhibit will be a number of special events, including a symposium on "Black Visual Culture During the Harlem Renaissance" on Saturday, Jan. 30; "I Dream and World," readings from the works of Harlem Renaissance writers, on Sunday Feb. 7; and a performance of "Negro Spirituals," on Sunday, Feb. 28. Further information about the exhibit and these events will appear in future issues of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.

Located at the corner of Chapel and York streets, the Yale University Art Gallery is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, and 1-6 p.m. on Sunday. For general information, call 432-0600. An entrance for people using wheelchairs is located at 201 York St., and there is an unmetered parking space nearby on York Street. For further information about access, call 432-0606.