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| Vol. 18, No. 18 | Feb. 4, 1999 |
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| Vol. 18, No. 18 | Feb. 4, 1999 |
Uncommon Bonds: Expressing African-American Identity," an exhibition of artwork dealing with African-American themes, is on display at the University Gallery through March 7.
The exhibition in being presented in conjunction with I'll Make Me A World: A Century of African-American Arts, a major new six-hour public television series, and there are a number of special events planned in relation to the exhibition.
"UD is one of several partner sites selected nationwide to present related events to help build audiences for artists and performers of diverse backgrounds," Belena Chapp, museums, said. "Partner sites also are charged with offering an historical context for contemporary artwork, inspiring people to consider the role of art and multiculturalism in their communities and motivating young people to explore their own creative talents.
"The University Gallery joins cultural institutions in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York and other cities throughout the country, in developing such outreach activities," Chapp said.
I'll Make Me A World: A Century of African-American Arts was shown locally on WHYY-TV. The series was produced by Blackside Inc. in Boston, which also produced the award-winning documentary Eyes on the Prize, and by Thirteen/WNET in New York.
The series presents inspiring stories of African-American writers, poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, filmmakers and actors who have worked throughout the 20th century. Offering surprising insights into this rich legacy will be contemporary artists, including Chuck D, Uta Hagen, Bill T. Jones, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jacob Lawrence, Spike Lee, Wynton Marsalis, Ben Vereen and Alice Walker.
The UD exhibition includes paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures primarily from the University Gallery's own collection of African-American art and also includes selected works from artists of other ethnic backgrounds, and from the University of Delaware's Permanent Collection.
Paintings and prints on view from the University of Delaware Permanent Collection include works by Elizabeth Catlett, George Biddle and Nat Hayman.
Artist profiles
The artists whose works are part of the gallery exhibition include:
Lewis Hine (1874-1940) was a teacher of nature studies at the Ethical Culture School in New York in 1903, when he first began taking photographs. After receiving a degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1905, he started a five-year project photographing immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. Engaged as a freelance photographer by the National Child Labor Committee, Hine put together a pictorial essay on child labor that eventually led to labor reform.
In 1918, he joined the American Red Cross and was sent to Europe to survey war damage. Always with social documentation in mind, Hine considered his work a form of evidence for the present and of history for the future. Although his work revolved around the progress and building of America, Lewis Hine died in poverty.
James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) created photographs that depicted social/class transitions of the early 20th century. In viewing Van Der Zee's photographs taken in Harlem between the wars, one receives a sense of well-being and a feeling that the African-American community is healthy, diverse, spiritual, prosperous and productive.
Jeanne Anderton is from Salisbury, Md., and received her master of fine arts degree from Syracuse University in 1987. Anderton created a photographic series for the Maryland Annual that suggested people, though none actually appeared. The pictures were after-images, visual imprints, of another time and another person.
Alexander Brook (1898-1980) is best known for his painted portraits. Brook studied with Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students' League in New York from 1914 to 1918. A critic for "The Arts" during the early 1920s, he became assistant director of the Whitney Studio Club in 1924. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, he traveled and exhibited his work with his wife, artist Peggy Bacon. His career as a painter continued into the 1960s.
Fletcher Martin (born 1904) spent four years in the Navy, from 1922-26, then took a job at a printing business in Los Angeles. He worked there for nine years while attending art lectures at night. By 1935, he was an artist with the Federal Art Project, completing murals for North Hollywood High School, the San Pedro, Calif., post office, and the post office at Lamesa, Texas.
In 1940, Martin had his first exhibition in New York and followed Grant Wood as artist-in-residence at the University of Iowa. Two years later, he was named chairman of painting and drawing at Kansas City Art Institute (succeeding Thomas Hart Benton). He then served as an artist/war correspondent for Life magazine, covering the campaigns in Africa and Normandy.
Grace A. Albee (1890-1985) began wood-engraving as a hobby in 1928 but went on to study printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design and with Paul Bornet in Paris. As the mother of five sons fighting in World War II, she would utilize printmaking as "a balance wheel and a distraction from some of life's worries." She exhibited two prints and won an award in the 1942 Metropolitan Museum of Art wartime exhibition, "Artists for Victory." Albee's engravings often portrayed nostalgic rural themes and landscapes.
Philip Reisman (1904-1992) attended the Art Students' League, studying with Wallace Morgan and George Bridgeman. The son of Polish immigrant parents, he formed a connection with the John Reed Club and the social realist group of artists who gathered there. A number of them were disenchanted with the social situation in America and believed "the United States was a land of poverty, injustice, racism, intolerance, and police brutality."
Reisman became involved with the New Deal Public Works Art Project between 1933 and 1934. He traveled through the South and compiled a visual record of the architecture of the region. During this trip, he created the compelling image of a lynching entitled, "The South," for the Public Works Administration. The work reflects Reisman's fascination and horror with the injustice that resulted from Jim Crow segregation and discrimination.
Madoka Takagi (born 1956) was born in Obihire, Hokkaido, and educated in Tokyo. She moved to New York in 1983 to study English at Columbia University but really wanted to become a photographer. She first worked in commercial labs and as a printer, and in 1988 did a series on Ellis Island that coincided with its renovation project.
Clare Leighton (1899-1989) attended the Brighton School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Arts at the University of London. In the 1920s she began her career as an illustrator, completing numerous books including Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey and four of her own titles. In 1939, Leighton immigrated to the United States and soon accepted a visiting lecturer's position at Duke University. The artist championed traditional agriculture in the face of mechanization. Leighton maintained a romantic idea of farm labor that had provided the backbone of the Southern economy for generations.
Howard Cook (1901-1980) studied at the Art Students' League in New York City and won Guggenheim Fellowships in 1932 and 1934. The second fellowship allowed him to work from the figure during an extended driving trip that stretched through the South from Virginia to Texas. He made drawings of a diverse range of individuals during the trip.
Allan Rohan Crite (born 1910) is a painter and illustrator. He studied at Boston University, the Massachusetts School of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, and Harvard University.
Beginning in the mid 1930s, Crite developed a series of 'neighborhood paintings' that were inspired by his Boston community's predominantly African-American Roxbury district. After 1941, he began to concentrate on printmaking. His illustrations of Negro spirituals and religious themes that emphasize the non-European aspects of the Bible stemmed from his African American heritage and his beliefs as a devout Episcopalian.
Selma Burke (1901-1995) received a master of fine art degree from Columbia University in 1941 after studying with artists Henri Matisse and Aristide Maillol in Paris. Winning a national competition, she sculpted a bronze plaque with the profile of President Franklin Roosevelt that is used on the dime. In 1946, Burke moved to New Hope, Pa. and began producing a number of small portrait pieces, including the bust of Mary McLeod Bethune that is included in this exhibition.
Lonnie Holley (born 1950), like many other "Outsider" artists, has had little formal artistic education. A native of Birmingham, Ala., he began sculpting in order to work through his grief over the deaths of two nieces in 1979, carving their tombstones. Soon he started work on small surreal and abstract pieces using manmade industrial slag from local foundries. His urge to create led him to the use of salvageable matter from garbage dumps, fire sites and vacant lots.
Holley's works are often pieces of linear images, profiles of African Americans, formed from wire or cut from foam- perhaps providing the key to understanding his intuitive associative thought. Holley uses the wire profile to refer to the past, inheritance and ancestors. African American culture is at the crux of these stories, whether in the recollection of personal experiences of home life or in observations about contemporary society.
Adrian Piper (born 1948) received a bachelor of arts degree from City College of New York in 1974, and master's and doctoraal degrees from Harvard in 1977 and 1981, and serves as professor of philosophy at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In this exhibition, her print, "Let's Talk," addresses the subject of individual dialogue as a means to approaching or combating racial, sexual or cultural differences. The work implies that communication is the key to overcoming the generalizations of prejudice.
Lorna Simpson (born 1960) is best known for photographic works that incorporate objects, figures and text in an aesthetic reminiscent of contemporary advertising. Using a visual language of commodification, she examines ideas of race and gender and deals specifically with the notion of invisibility, representing black women as survivors, protagonists and victims. In 1992, Simpson narrowed the scope of her images, focusing solely on "details, either of the body, or objects that represent gender, sexuality and other themes."
Romare Bearden (1912-1987) was born in Charlotte, N.C., but soon moved to Harlem. Graduating from New York University in 1936 with a degree in science, he began his career as a social realist painter in the late 1930s. Bearden is best known for his collages filled with dense symbolism and social commentary, expressing "the feelings and emotions that are universal to all humanity."
Special events
Several special programs will be held in conjunction with the exhibition.
On Tuesday, Feb. 16, a brown bag lunch and gallery tour will be held from noon to 1 p.m., in the gallery, led by the undergraduate students in the University Gallery's Curatorial Apprenticeship Program responsible for organizing the exhibition. The event is free and open to the public.
On Saturday, Feb. 20, "Making a Mark on My World: A Creative Art Workshop for Children" will be held. The free workshop, for children ages 6 to 10, will take place from 2-3:30 p.m. Participation is limited to 15 children and pre-registration is required by calling the University Gallery at 831-8242 no later than Monday, Feb. 15. Snow date for the activity is Saturday, Feb. 27.
The workshop is designed to teach children about artistic use of materials and personal expression. Students will tour the exhibition and will be given their own bag of artist's supplies to use to fashion objects that reflect their personal identity. Participants will have a chance to explain to the group what they have made and can take their projects home.
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, from noon-1 p.m., James Newton of the Black American Studies Program, will present a free, public lecture, "African-American Art: Culture as Image." Newton, who holds a doctorate in education, is an artist and was the director of UD's Black American Studies Program for 20 years.
On Wednesday, Feb. 24, from 7-9 p.m. the gallery's curatorial apprentices will present the 1996 film, Basquiat, which focuses on the meteoric career and brief life of the black graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. This free film presentation will be in 101 Recitation Hall.
The University Gallery is located on the second floor of Old College. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, and 1-5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday. It is closed University holidays. The University Gallery is wheelchair accessible. To request other disability accommodations or to arrange guided tours, individuals are urged to contact the gallery office at 831-8242. A web site for "Uncommon Bonds: Expressing African-American Identity" may be accessed at <http://seurat.art.udel.edu>, then click on the University Gallery name.
To learn more about the I'll Make Me A World television series, as well as Blackside Inc., visit the web site at <http://www.blackside.com>.
-Beth Thomas
