The artist received his BFA from the Otis Art Institute, in Los Angeles, was a resident fellow at the Studio Museum, in Harlem, and in 1987 moved to Chicago, where he began teaching at the University of Illinois. Marshall has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Illinois Council for the Arts. His work has been widely collected by museums throughout the United States and has been featured in major national and international exhibitions.

For these new commissioned works, Marshall will be utilizing two large midair surfaces in the museum's Haas Atrium. The artist's murals will depict Mount Vernon and Monticello, the respective estates of founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Although these cherished sites have been depicted countless times before, Marshall's paintings will be quite different — playfully incorporating the slaves who supported plantation life. At first glance, a number of optical tricks conceal them from view, but visitors who engage with the works will discover the otherwise invisible figures so often omitted from representations of American history.

The Precita Eyes Mural Center — a San Francisco community-based arts organization that has played an integral role in the city's cultural heritage and in arts education — will aid in the execution of these works, and the finished murals will be unveiled on February 26, 2009. This date comes roughly one month after the inauguration of the United States' first multiracial president—an opportune moment to reconsider issues of history, race, and representation.