Crabtree, Andrea Y. Motley

CRABTREE, ANDREA Y. MOTLEY (born 25 February 1959), the first female deep-sea diver for the US Army and the first woman to pass the Army’s rigorous Second Class Diver Course. Crabtree served for twenty-one years in an Army specialty field that was, and still is, male dominated. Crabtree was briefly assigned to be a diver in Korea, but was forced to reclassify when the military occupational specialty for divers was restricted to men. As a Second Class diver, Crabtree was trained to use gear that could potentially weigh up to 200 pounds, and she was trained to do various underwater tasks, including the welding and operation of hydraulic tools. A 1982 photograph taken at a US Navy facility in Panama City, Florida, captures her in a bulky diving suit. A 2017 portrait of her, painted by the artist Henry Taylor, and based on the 1982 photograph, is on permanent view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in Gallery 508. Though Taylor’s portrait is based on Crabtree’s Army documentation, her posture aligns with subjects of Old Master paintings, emphasizing her significance as Black American female figure. She has also been featured in artworks by Tavares Strachan, exhibited at Marian Goodman Gallery.