During her two-decade-long career, Streat used art as a tool to erase “all racial, religious, and social lines between peoples that too often make men hate each other.” She explored her African American and Cherokee heritage in works like this one. The first piece by an African American woman to enter MoMA’s permanent collection, Rabbit Man merges symbols from various Indigenous and African American cultural and spiritual traditions together with Yaqui folk music, to create a figure that appears human-, animal-, and masklike. Streat also performed interpretive dances in front of her work, sometimes echoing the gesture enacted in Rabbit Man, furthering the lively dynamism of her imagined creation.

Gallery label from

Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, November 3–February 22, 2024

Medium Gouache on board
Dimensions 6 5/8 × 4 7/8" (16.8 × 12.4 cm)
Credit Purchase
Object number 216.1942
Department Drawings and Prints

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