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“I’m speechless… seeing this painting for the first time is incredible and it doesn’t really seem real yet… I need to stay here a little bit longer and let it sink in… I can’t believe it’s here in The Metropolitan Museum of Art!” ✨

Pathbreaking deep sea diver Andrea Motley Crabtree (@motleycrabtree) recently visited @metmuseum to see a portrait of hers by Henry Taylor for the first time. #MetModerncurator Ian Alteveer met Crabtree and her service dog Buddy on the steps of The Met, and they walked to the Afrofuturist Period Room where the painting is currently installed.

There Crabtree encountered the monumental painted image of her younger self. Taylor’s portrait is based on a photograph of Crabtree taken in 1982 at a U.S. Navy facility in Panama City, Florida. She was the first woman in the U.S.Army to pass the rigorous qualification for deep sea diving, a highly specialized aspect of military service. Nevertheless, her path forward was hindered by sexism and racism, and so reflecting on her personal history, the location of the painting in the Afrofuturist Period Room seems particularly apt as the painting offers the space to consider: “What could have been? What could I be if I had been allowed to be all that I could be…same as Seneca village…what could have been had they been allowed to thrive? … so, this absolutely belongs here.” #MetAfroFuturist

In the painting Crabtree is shown seated regally and poised, wearing a standard white diving uniform and holding a Mark V helmet in her lap. The specialized suit and gear, which cumulatively weighed 198 lbs, is sometimes mistaken by visitors, who do not necessarily recognize the figure as a diver, but that doesn’t bother Crabtree. To her, the painting remains inspirational: