The Newark Museum
Newark, NJ
973-596-6550
http://www.newarkmuseum.org
Narratives of African American
Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection
Making its last stop on a national tour and
its only appearance in the greater New York metropolitan area, "Narratives
of African American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection"
comes to The Newark Museum from October 25, 2000, through February 25, 2001.
The exhibition, organized and circulated by The Art Gallery at the University
of Maryland, College Park, brings to life the transformation of African
American identity through nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American
art assembled from the private collection of distinguished scholar, artist,
educator and curator David C. Driskell. Dr. Juanita M. Holland, Assistant
Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland,
curates the show. Project director at The Newark Museum is Joseph Jacobs,
Curator of American Art. (left: Romare Bearden, Morning)
"Narratives
of African American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection"
features 100 
selected
works by over 60 artists, which together interpret the complex unfolding
of racial identity as seen in African American art. (left: Elizabeth
Catlett, Sharecropper; right: Ray DeCarva, Portrait of Paul Robeson)
"The Newark Museum is delighted to be a host venue
for this exhibition, and to add its voice to those paying tribute to Dr.
Driskell for his extraordinary contributions to African American art as
a collector, historian and advocate," says Mary Sue Sweeney Price,
Director. "We strive to serve our constituency by promoting and celebrating
cultural diversity both in our own collection and through special exhibitions,
and we are confident that this presentation will have significant meaning
for our varied audiences."
Concurrent
with this exhibition, The Newark Museum mounts selected works of African
American Art From the Collection, on view September 6, 2000, through
March 4, 2001. In addition, it collaborates with Aljira, A Center for Contemporary
Art, in presenting the companion show Echoes: The
Art of David C. Driskell, also organized by The Art Gallery at the
University of Maryland, College Park. This may be seen October 25 through
December 13, 2000, at the Robeson Art Gallery of Rutgers University, Newark.
(left: Melvin Edwards, Sippi Eye)
Narratives
of African American Art honors David C. Driskell - scholar, artist, educator
and curator - for his outstanding contributions and immeasurable impact.
In his various career capacities and especially as a mentor, Dr. Driskell's
artistic passions have influenced many artists and profoundly shaped the
world of African American art and the discipline of American art history.
(right: William H. Johnson, Children Playing London Bridge)
"...[I]t
is unlikely that anyone will exceed or match the enormity of his scholarly
contributions within this millennium," says Leslie King-Hammond, Dean
of the Maryland Institute College of Art about Dr. Driskell. (left:
Lois Mailou Jones, Notre-Dame de Paris)
In 1997, Dr. Driskell was advisor to President Bill Clinton
on the purchase of the first artwork by an African American artist to be
added to the White House art collection. Since 1980, he has been curator
of the William and Camille O. Cosby Collection, the largest private holding
of African American art in the world. His book, The Other Side of Color:
The African American Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr.
offers in-depth commentary on these works.
Born in 1931 in Eatonton, Georgia, Dr. Driskell has been
dedicated to the study of African American art since the early 1950s as
an undergraduate student at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
His Two Centuries of Black American Art, published
in 1976 for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is considered a leading
survey in art historical scholarship. Dr. Driskell also has edited, authored
or collaborated on numerous other publications, including African American
Visual Aesthetics (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), which investigates
notions of the postmodern as they pertain to African American art. In addition,
he has curated more than 35 exhibitions on African American artists, including
Aaron Douglas, Alma Thomas, Richard Hunt, Claude Clark and Keith Morrison,
among others.
Dr. Driskell considers himself an artist first and foremost.
His artwork, primarily painting and collage, has been described as colorist
and reflects his own Southern heritage and racial identity. He has had solo
shows at Midtown Payson Galleries in New York City and various other private
and university galleries. His work is included in many public and private
collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; the Corcoran
Gallery of Art,Washington, DC; and TaIladega College and the Birmingham
Museum of Art, both in Alabama.
Dr.
Driskell's parallel career as an educator, both in studio art and African
American art history, has had a powerful influence on the development of
young American artists and scholars, and on the growing field of African
Diaspora art history.
(left: Jacob Armstead Lawrence, The Travellers)
A professor of art at the University of Maryland since
1977, Dr. Driskell was named Distinguished University Professor of Art in
1995. His students include Stokely Carmichel, Walter Evans, Leslie King-Hammond,
Keith Morrison, Jessie Norman and Mary Lovelace O'Neal. (right: Augusta
Savage, Gamin)
As a collector, Dr. Driskell has built a large and diverse
repository of African American, African, European and Asian art. Many of
the works in his collection were acquired through personal relationships
with the artists and their families. Additionally, he has amassed an archive
of more than 50,000 letters, photographs, personal interviews and rare exhibition
catalogues pertaining to African American art and artists.
The Newark Museum's presentation of "Narratives of
African American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection"
is supported in part by funding from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
Read more about the Newark Museum
in Resource Library Magazine
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line
to see enlargements.
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
This page was originally published in Resource
Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for
more information. rev. 4/6/11
Search Resource
Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2011 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
Making its last stop on a national tour and
its only appearance in the greater New York metropolitan area, "Narratives
of African American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection"
comes to The Newark Museum from October 25, 2000, through February 25, 2001.
The exhibition, organized and circulated by The Art Gallery at the University
of Maryland, College Park, brings to life the transformation of African
American identity through nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American
art assembled from the private collection of distinguished scholar, artist,
educator and curator David C. Driskell. Dr. Juanita M. Holland, Assistant
Professor, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland,
curates the show. Project director at The Newark Museum is Joseph Jacobs,
Curator of American Art. (left: Romare Bearden, Morning)
