Before Kehinde Wiley painted Barack Obama’s presidential portrait, he studied under Dewey Crumpler. Deborah Roberts and Rozeal were also among his students. His influence extends across generations of Black artists. And this week, the teacher got a spotlight of his own.
An artist with nearly six decades in the business, Dewey Crumpler: Sonic Lineages, which opened September 30 at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora, is his first solo show at the museum.
For Crumpler, this is a long time coming. Smokey Robinson commissioned him to paint a mural at Motown Records in Detroit in 1967, the year he graduated from high school. He went on to paint public murals across San Francisco in the 1970s and ’80s, and he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1989 until it closed in 2022.
The exhibition also arrives with a question about the spaces that keep those legacies visible. MoAD celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, reopening in October 2025 following a six-month closure for building and system upgrades. Key Jo Lee, the museum’s chief of curatorial affairs and public programs, acknowledges that Black residents make up a small share of San Francisco’s population, but says the museum is committed to staying.
