"On the Beach" is a black and white linoleum block print by Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs (1915-2010). Burroughs produced prints at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she completed her master's degree in 1948 and later enrolled as a senior citizen in order to gain access to their printing presses. Those prints were mainly lithographs, etchings, and silkscreens. She designed "On the Beach" in the 1950s after seeing a family group on a beach in Montego Bay, Jamaica. This impression was printed in September 1977, and the linoleum printing block is also in the Museum's collection.
Beyond her work as an artist, Burroughs also was an educator, writer, and activist. During the 1930s Burroughs worked for the Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project in Chicago. Her family had moved to Chicago from Louisiana as part of the "Great Migration," the relocation of African Americans to the north. In 1941 she helped found the WPA/FAP-sponsored South Side Community Art Center in the predominantly black South Side neighborhood. In 1961 she and her husband founded Chicago's Ebony Museum of History and Art, now called the DuSable Museum of African American History. She served as director for both institutions.