BOSTON — Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston highlights the artist’s devotion to making Black people “become really visible,” as he put it in a 1970 talk at Boston University. The first significant exhibition since his 90th birthday retrospective at the Danforth Art Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 2012, the show features paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and book illustrations in which Wilson documents and honors blackness. The humanity that Wilson, born in 1922, witnessed in his lifetime featured a great deal of hopelessness and dejection, feelings summed up in “Black Despair” (1945). In the painting, a Black man seated at a table hides his head in his arms, his right hand held out in a tight fist. While this gesture signals anguish and agitation, it can also be read as defiance. The figure in the painting, Wilson’s brother, William, endured racial attacks and discrimination while stationed at a military base in the South. “He was very depressed,” the artist once recalled. “Black soldiers … were subject to all the indignities of Jim Crow, the segregated buses, the segregated everything.” John Wilson, “Study for Malcolm X” (1970), color separation, black crayon and graphite on tracing paper; Collection of Julia Wilson (courtesy Martha Richardson Fine Art)Wilson’s social realism style was well suited to the difficult subjects he took on in his art. One of his most famous paintings, the 1952 mural “The Incident,” depicts a group of hooded Klansmen lynching a Black man as a Black family watches in terror from a nearby window. Painted in Mexico and now lost, “The Incident” is represented in the show by preliminary studies and a black and white photograph of the original. (The piece was also the subject of the Yale University Art Gallery’s 2019 show Reckoning with ‘The Incident’: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural.) His lithograph “The Trial” (1951), depicting a Black man cowering below a row of menacing White judges, still feels relevant.Witnessing Humanity presents another aspect of Wilson’s art that some may not be familiar with, his children’s books illustrations. Among other works, the show highlights Becky (1966), written by his wife, Julia, Striped Ice Cream (1968), and Malcolm X (1970). Installation view of Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Wall: “Young Americans” (1972–75); foreground: “Maquette for ‘Eternal Presence’” (modeled 1985, cast 1998) (photo Carl Little/Hyperallergic)Wilson’s work continues to carry weight and meaning because of the oppression and racism he portrayed, but also because he sought out opportunities to celebrate Black individuals. His Richard Wright Suite (2001) offered a portfolio of six color etchings with aquatint illustrating the celebrated author’s short story “Down by the Riverside.” In an afterword to that book, he noted how he could identify with Wright’s characters struggling to survive with dignity. In 1986, Wilson won an NEA commission to create a bronze bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the US Capitol rotunda. “I wanted people to recognize him,” he wrote, quoted in the exhibition texts, “but I also wanted to suggest the intangible energy … and dogged strength he had that allowed him to carry out these impossible campaigns.” He delivered the sculpture to Washington, DC, wrapped in blankets in the back of his Mazda. John Wilson, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” (1985), black and white pastel on cream Japanese paper; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Estate of John Wilson, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)Wilson, who taught at Boston University from 1964 to 1986, was a community artist up to his death in 2015. He uplifted his neighborhood through his art, most notably his monumental “Eternal Presence,” sited on the grounds of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. “It is a Black image,” he once said of the monumental head, “but I want it to have a kind of presence and life force that will suggest a universal humanity that all people can identify with.” The exhibition includes one of two maquettes that were cast to help fund the commission. Community also comes to the fore in the large-scale colored crayon and charcoal portraits Wilson made for an unrealized mural, “Young Americans” (1972–75). The five (of seven) life-sized figures represent a new generation ready to face an unpredictable world. It is an upbeat vision from an artist who lived through some of this country’s darkest times. John Wilson, “Study for the Mural ‘The Incident'” (1952), opaque and transparent watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper, squared for transfer; Yale University Art Gallery (Estate of John Wilson, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)Illustrations by John Wilson for Julia Wilson’s book Becky in the exhibition’s “Book Nook” (photo Carl Little/Hyperallergic) John Wilson, “Roz No. 14” (1972), colored crayon on paper (photo Carl Little/Hyperallergic)Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson continues at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through June 22. The exhibition was co-curated by Edward Saywell, Patrick Murphy, Leslie King Hammond, and Jennifer Farrell. It travels next to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it will be on view September 20, 2025–February 8, 2026.