"We are pleased to be able to use this artwork from the National Museum of American Art to help promote Census 2000. The Bureau has requested permission from the Museum and the artist's family to display this work on the Internet. We are currently awaiting approval."

African-American artist Romare Bearden celebrated life through art. Born in North Carolina, raised in Harlem and Pittsburgh, Bearden decided to become an artist after earning a degree in mathematics at New York University. In 1935, he drew political cartoons for the Baltimore Afro-American. During the civil rights movement, Bearden worked as social worker in Harlem and encouraged many young black artists to continue their work. His innovative use of collage earned him numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Arts. His own childhood memories inspired Family, the collage on wood selected for the Census 2000 poster. The work served as the model for a ceramic tile wall mural for a federal building in Queens, New York. The General Services Administration Art-in-Architecture Program transferred this model to the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Bearden’s artwork depicts a traditional family with a young couple presenting their child to his grandparents. In 1990, 18 percent of all children in the United States lived with a father who was a full-time provider and a homemaker mother, compared with 47 percent in 1950. Census 2000 will provide more information on the changing family.