Film director, screenwriter, producer and distributor Oscar Micheaux, who illuminated the African-American experience through more than 40 feature films, was immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp today, taking his place as the 33rd person honored in the popular Black Heritage commemorative stamp series.

Micheaux’s unique storytelling ability shattered stereotypes and challenged film audiences with realistic representations of African-Americans. The stamp was dedicated today at a ceremony in Miller Auditorium at Columbia University.

“Oscar Micheaux was a transformational filmmaker and gifted storyteller with an uncompromising technique that embraced honest depictions of African-Americans,” said Delores Killette, vice president and Consumer Advocate for the U.S. Postal Service. “His films not only entertained, they left audiences with a sense of encouragement, hope and inspiration.”

Joining Killette at the event were Wycliffe Gordon, jazz musician and leader of the Wycliffe Gordon Quartet; Melvin Van Peebles, film director; Lisa Collins, producer, Right on Time Productions; and Jamel Joseph, chair, Film Department, Columbia University. Other events taking place in New York City to recognize the issuance of the Oscar Micheaux commemorative stamp will be held at the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building on June 23 and at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn on June 24.

The stamp is designed by Derry Noyes of Washington, DC, and features a stylized portrait of Oscar Micheaux by artist Gary Kelly of Cedar Falls, IA. The artwork is based on one of the few surviving photographs of Micheaux, a portrait that appeared in his 1913 novel The Conquest.

All 33 stamp designs in the Black Heritage commemorative series can be viewed online at http://beyondtheperf.com/.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

Pictured: The 33rd stamp in the Black Heritage series honors pioneering filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, who wrote, directed, produced, and distributed more than 40 movies during the first half of the 20th century. An ambitious, larger-than-life figure, Micheaux thrived at a time when African-American filmmakers were rare, venues for their work were scarce, and support from the industry did not exist. Micheaux’s entrepreneurial spirit and independent vision continue to inspire new generations of filmmakers and artists. http://beyondtheperf.com/. (PRNewsFoto/U.S. Postal Service).

Gamers will have the opportunity to moonwalk alongside the King of Pop.

Video game developer Ubisoft announced it would release a new dancing-and-singing game featuring Michael Jackson this holiday season. The as-yet-unnamed game will be among the first to use Kinect and Move, the respective motion-detecting camera systems for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 due out later this year.

“Your goal is to dance like Michael,” said Tony Key, Ubisoft’s marketing vice president. “Do what the guy on the screen is doing and you’re there. It’ll score you based on the quality of your performance.”

The game’s launch will roughly coincide with the November debut of a new album containing unreleased Jackson recordings. Versions of the game, which will feature songs from Jackson’s catalog, including “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” will also be available for Nintendo’s Wii and the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable handheld consoles.

The announcement was made during Ubisoft’s Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference at the Los Angeles Theater. No footage from the game was shown, but dancers from Jackson’s “This Is It” tour took to the stage to perform a routine set to “Beat It” at the conclusion of Monday’s event.

“With the technology that is available today, you will be able to learn how to be as good as those guys are and even better,” said Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft’s CEO.

It won’t be Jackson’s first appearance in a game. He starred in 1989’s action game “Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker.”

Ubisoft has already found the right moves with the dancing game genre. The game maker’s “Just Dance,” released for the Wii last year, has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.

“Rock Band” developers Harmonix are also choreographing their own dancing title, unveiled at Microsoft’s press conference Monday with a routine set to Gwen Stefani’s “Keep On Dancing.” “Dance Central” uses Kinect to detect players’ movements and translate them to a flashy avatar on screen.

© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

LOS ANGELES, June 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Sixth Annual Ryman Arts Student Art Exhibition is hosted by and now on display at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Exposition Park. The Exhibition, which features more than 200 of the Ryman Arts students’ best works from the 2009-2010 school year, showcases the art of the talented young artists, who take part in Ryman Arts’ intense training program. The exhibition will be on view through July 6, 2010.

“The Annual Exhibition reflects the depth of Ryman Arts’ training and the breadth of the students’ potential,” notes Diane Brigham, Executive Director of Ryman Arts. “The opportunity to have their best work displayed in public serves both as a tremendous learning experience and an exciting milestone for our students.”

Brigham attributes the success of Ryman Arts’ students to the program’s philosophy of “nurturing talent, inspiring growth and changing lives,” as well as to the passion and perseverance of the students themselves, who come from all over Southern California—from the Los Angeles urban core, to the outlying Orange and Los Angeles county suburbs—to attend Ryman Arts’ classes for 3 1/2 hours every Saturday.

Citing the students’ tremendous talent and motivation, Brigham says, “These teens demonstrate remarkable focus, creativity and tenacity in honing their skills through the program, making them highly desirable to art schools and universities. Significantly, in a region where so few high school graduates successfully pursue higher education, 98 percent of Ryman Arts’ alumni go on to college, and the majority are the first in their family to pursue a higher education.”

Brigham added that by nurturing young artists in developing their creative gifts, Ryman Arts helps ensure growth of the arts, as well as a sustainable cultural future and healthy economy for Southern California. Many Ryman Arts students go on to employment in art careers including graphic design, architecture, film, animation, fashion and environmental design.

“Each year we look forward to being as proud of the Ryman Arts students as we would be if we had trained them ourselves,” says Charmaine Jefferson, Executive Director of the California African American Museum. “For CAAM this is more than just a gesture. It is our chance to give back and support Ryman Arts, as a neighboring organization that we not only adore, but respect because they put their souls into nurturing and giving these students the best artistic training possible. CAAM in turn provides the space and patrons, and the opportunity for the students to experience curating and shaping a museum exhibition for their work and that of their peers. It’s an invaluable collaboration, and we couldn’t be more privileged to have the work of these talented and budding young artists presented in our galleries.”

The California African American Museum is located at 600 State Drive, in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, CA 90037. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 5pm and Sunday from 11am to 5pm Parking is located at 39th & Figueroa Streets – $8.00 per vehicle. CAAM is a California State Museum as declared by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Admission to the Museum is free and open to the public.

About Ryman Arts

Ryman Arts provides gifted teens the opportunity to reach their artistic potential through free high-level arts education in a rigorous studio environment. In addition to artistic training, Ryman Arts students also build self-discipline and confidence, and receive college and career guidance that helps position them for success in their careers and lives. Ryman Arts currently teaches talented high school students from more than 200 schools in Southern California, 80 percent of who reside in low-income communities and have no other opportunities to develop their artistic gifts.

The program began in 1990 to honor the memory of legendary Disney artist and mentor Herbert D. Ryman to encourage young artists to reach their potential. Courses, taught by professional teaching artists, foster students’ artistic development and provide the knowledge they need to pursue higher education and careers in the arts. Ryman Arts aims to inspire, nurture, and challenge the next generation of artists to reach their potential.

Entertainment Attorney and Entrepreneur to Receive Prestigious Business Award on Saturday, June 26 and Hosts JONES MAGAZINE SUMMER SOIREE to follow

NEW YORK, June 24 /PRNewswire/ — L. Londell McMillan, partner and co-head of the Media and Entertainment Global Industry Sector at the international law firm of Dewey and LeBoeuf LLP, will be honored at the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation Gala Luncheon on Saturday, June 26 at the Lewis Estate in East Hampton, New York. Wall Street veterans, Peter Offermann, Phyllis Schless and Robert C. Winters, Jr. will also be acknowledged, with each receiving a Millennium Member award recognizing the key roles they played in the life and career of Mr. Lewis. The event, which is sponsored by American Express, Bloomberg, Black Entertainment Television, Belvedere, Kate’s Paperie, The Camelot Group, GenNx360 Capital Partners, and The NorthStar Group will feature performances by singer, songwriter and Broadway performer Deborah Cox and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. WCBS-TV News Anchor Maurice DuBois will serve as emcee.

“The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation is pleased to recognize the hard work of L. Londell McMillan and the wonderful contributions of Peter, Phyllis and Robert to the story and legacy of my husband,” said Loida Lewis, widow of the legendary mogul and foundation chair. “Perseverance and dedication, especially in entrepreneurship, normally pay off in individual success and community development, and help society in general. We are happy for their success and are grateful for their help of the Foundation.”

The prominent attorney, Mr. McMillan, will receive the Reginald F. Lewis Award, which honors African American entrepreneurs who succeeded internationally in business before the age of 50, as Lewis did. The first African American to build a billion-dollar company, Lewis led the largest leveraged buyout in the 1980s. He went on to shatter all expectations and inspire future generations of African American entrepreneurs.

Mr. McMillan, who has represented such luminaries as the late Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Usher, LL Cool J, Roberta Flack and Spike Lee, joins the likes of Sean “Diddy” Combs and real estate mogul R. Donahue Peebles, past recipients. He is also one of the co-owners and partners with real-estate developer Bruce Ratner and hip-hop icon Jay-Z in the New Jersey Nets and the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, future home to the NBA team. Additionally, Mr. McMillan is owner and Group Publisher of The NorthStar Group, which publishes Jones Magazine (www.jonesmag.com) and The Source (www.thesource.com) .

Following the Gala Luncheon later that evening, Mr. McMillan and Jones Magazine will host its first annual Summer Soiree to celebrate the successful launching of Jones Magazine, the premier fashion, beauty, travel and lifestyle shopping guide for women of color.

“I am humbled to be recognized in the name of the great Reginald F. Lewis to support the Foundation in his honor. Indeed, like others inspired by his legacy, I walk in footsteps he created to make the road clearer for many of us to follow” said Mr. McMillan. “We also look forward to celebrating the historic launch of Jones Magazine later than evening.”

Additional sponsors of the Gala are J.P. Morgan, Ariel Investments LLC, The NorthStar Group, Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP and Prudential Financial. The Jones Magazine Summer Soiree is sponsored by The NorthStar Group and Foxwoods Resort Casino.

SOURCE The NorthStar Group

The scholarly art dealer ran the blue-chip venue for a decade. He also was director of the Venice-based Lapis Press, which published fanciful, limited-edition artists’ books.

Shapazian died of lung cancer Saturday at his Los Angeles home, said Robert Dean, a friend.

“Robert just kind of sailed under the radar a bit,” said Dean, who also was a colleague at the Gagosian. “He’s more like a poet’s poet, if the poets were collectors. He both influenced and inspired a lot of people.”

When leading contemporary art dealer Larry Gagosian hired him in 1995 to oversee the launch of a West Coast outpost, he praised Shapazian’s knowledge of photography, 1990s art, and artists Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, The Times reported at the time.

Under Shapazian’s direction, Gagosian shows were “always provocative,” adding “a ‘big time’ dimension to the local scene,” online magazine Artnet said in 2004. The magazine gave as an example the gallery’s survey of black-and-white Warhol paintings derived from advertising.

Shapazian ran the blue-chip venue for a decade, advising collectors to do as he did: Don’t invest for monetary gain but follow “ideas and feeling,” he said in a 2008 interview.

Business tycoon Eli Broad was one of Shapazian’s primary clients, Dean said.

From 1986 until its closing in 1994, Shapazian was director of the Venice-based Lapis Press, founded by artist Sam Francis to publish fanciful, limited-edition artists’ books.

Many titles were experimental, resulting in “books with an unusual degree of presence,” Shapazian told The Times in 1993.

The texts were often obscure, evocatively illustrated and of the highest quality while aiming to amuse.

An example of Shapazian’s playfulness was evident in philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard’s study of Duchamp. The Lapis release was covered in green velour, the same material Duchamp used for his 1934 work “The Green Box.”

Robert Michael Shapazian was born in 1942 in Fresno to Ara and Margaret Shapazian.

Since he liked art, he started buying antique objects from Thailand when he was 13. He sold some of them to galleries and museums while starting his own collection, which grew to include Asian art, 18th century French furniture and illustrated Russian books.

After earning a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley in 1964, Shapazian studied English literature at Harvard University, earning a master’s in 1965 and a doctorate in 1970. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on pastoral poetry and painting in the Renaissance.

He had worked in his family’s agricultural business in Fresno and built a collection of experimental photography that critics considered extraordinary.

In recent years, Shapazian taught writing and art to at-risk youths, friends said.

Since traveling the world alone at 20, he continued to globe-trot and liked to visit “very traditional tribes in distant places in Africa,” he once said.

His contribution to the arts and literature had been recognized by the French government, which named him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Shapazian is survived by a sister.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Hampton University Museum

Founded in 1868, the Hampton University Museum is the nation’s oldest African American museum. With galleries dedicated to African American, African, American Indian and Asian and Pacific art and artifacts, the museum contains more than 9,000 objects representing cultures and people from around the world. Within its fine arts collection is the largest existing collection of works in any museum by the artists John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence and Samella Lewis.

Located in the newly restored Huntington Building (the former library) on the grounds of historic Hampton University campus, The Hampton University Museum brings its remarkable collection to the public through an array of educational initiatives including permanent and changing exhibitions, the Children’s Curiosity Room, the Center for African American History and Life, Kids Korner (a story time), publications, lectures, symposia, art workshops and summer camps, school partnerships and the quarterly publication the International Review of African American Art. The Museum’s membership and community programs offers Museum supporters an assortment of lectures, workshops and group travel opportunities. The Museum also has an active group of volunteers, including The Biggers’ Circle, student support group.

February 28, 2010 – November 27, 2010

The City of Hampton’s 400th Anniversary

The City of Hampton: Through the Lens of Reuben V. Burrell and James Van Der Zee
Opening Reception and Birthday Celebration for Mr. Burrell – Sunday, February 28, 2010

Reuben V. Burrell has documented through photographs a half of a century of Hampton University events – both big and small. Not only is Mr. Burrell the Griot (historian) of the University but his lens goes beyond the campus into the surrounding community. Coming to Hampton as a student in 1938 Burrell finished his course requirements in 1940, after which, World War II was pending. He received a B.S. degree in Industrial Arts from Hampton in 1947, and then enrolled at New York University where he earned his M.A. degree in Industrial Arts Education in 1949. Hired at Hampton in December 1949, Mr. Burrell began his career as the school photographer. For more than sixty years, he has provided an invaluable service to the university documenting its history as well as reprinting historic photographs. He has also documented landmarks, businesses, social and civic activities in the city of Hampton. His photographs include well known individuals in the city as well.

James Van Der Zee is recognized as the dean of African American photographers based on his large body of photographs taken in Harlem, New York during more than half of the 19th century. In 1906 Van Der Zee left his hometown of Lenox, MA here he met and married Kate L. Brown, a seamstress from Newport News, Virginia. The couple’s first child, Rachel, was born in 1907 and shortly afterward they traveled to Virginia. The Van Der Zee’s decided to remain in Tidewater, VA where Van Der Zee found employment as a waiter at the Hotel Chamberlin. The photographs will share images of two categories: the everyday activities of Slabtown residents and the academic community at Whittier Preparatory School.

Partial funding for this exhibition provided by the City of Hampton, 400th Anniversary Celebration Fund.

Photographs, Reuben V. Burrell, Collection of Hampton University Museum

Call or email Vanessa Thaxton-Ward for more information at 757.727.5508 or email vanessa.thaxton-ward@hamptonu.edu.

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There’s something about Cuba that captures the imagination of folks in South Florida.

Some of it is the proximity, the feeling it’s so close you can reach out and touch it.

Some of it is the embargo, the forbidden nature of the place.

“Whatever it is, it has people excited,” says Jack O’Brien, curator for the Naples Art Association. “I would tell people I was going to Cuba and they would get very excited.”

O’Brien recently returned from a trip the association is counting on to plant the seeds for a blockbuster exhibit in March. The hope is the show will provide a lift similar to that of the Princess Diana gowns exhibit, which has pushed record numbers through the doors at the von Liebig Art Center in Cambier Park.

“We wanted to put on something sig­nificant, like the Princess Diana exhibit,” says Joel Kessler, the association’s execu­tive director. “Obviously it won’t be as successful as Diana, but it will still be significant.”

That’s important for an organization facing financial stress. Unbudgeted repairs were needed to the tune of $200,000, a huge amount for an organiza­tion with a $1.3 million annual budget.

But this isn’t merely commercial en­terprise; its roots are very much in the art. The idea’s genesis came about five years ago, when O’Brien started working with a group who wanted to host a Latin America festival downtown. The goal was to put on an accompanying art show and put art in local galleries.

That idea continued to float around for years, never to get off the ground. But then a local art collector with strong ties to Cuba suggested to Kessler an exhibit of Cuban art could be arranged.

“Joel and (John Parke Wright) were both kicking around this idea at the same time,” O’Brien says. “When Parke said he could arrange it, we decided to go.”

What O’Brien says he found was a vibrant and well-organized arts scene still struggling with the ideas of identity and freedom decades after being closed off to its northern neighbor.

Perhaps it’s one too many viewings of “Buena Vista Social Club,” but there’s a tendency to imagine O’Brien’s trip as trip down tiny back streets in search of a rumored genius.

That couldn’t have been further from his experience, he says. Most of the art group’s time was spent being whisked between lunches and studio tours led by Roberto Chile, a Cuban artist and documentary filmmaker.

Walking down the streets they would have found art, but not the kind they were looking for, O’Brien says.

“It would have been so hard to do that,” he says. “We would have found a lot of art done for the souvenir market. But it wouldn’t have been art that explores concepts and ideas.”

Instead Chile took them directly to the source. Unlike major American artists with agents and galleries representing their work, the Cuban artists are left to fend for themselves in many ways. One of the exceptions to the U.S. embargo is that art can be purchased. So the artists have penetrated the American market better than they have in their own country.

Their work often explores loss of fam­ily who have left for Florida, personal freedoms and of a simpler time in their country’s life.

“There’s a certain nostalgia to the work,” O’Brien says.

That longing for the past is often the theme for Kadir Lopez, one of the artists O’Brien is hoping to display in March. Lopez takes salvaged metal advertising signs from before the revolution and imprints them with scenes of Cuban life. A giant sign encouraging people to drink Coca-Cola is the canvas for a photograph of people gathering along the Malecon, Havana’s famous waterfront boulevard.

The work evokes simple pleasures. But its composition shows an ingenuity shown by the artists in their search for mediums.

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by Ben Johnson

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by David Braybrooke

The enslavement of African citizens and the influences from their many and varied cultures greatly contributed to the evolving art form of African American dance. In many African societies dance was considered to play a more central role than the use of language and literacy in general. Even though the roots of African dance may not remain in their purest form in the modern African American dance styles, they have certainly been heavily influential in the development of American dance.

The Slave Trade:

Slaves were imported from a variety of ethnic backgrounds; from Senegal to the Congo-Angola region, Mozambique and Madagascar – from all over West and West-Central Africa. Each group of people brought individual cultural traditions and dance styles that were unique to the different regions. 95% of the slaves didn’t actually travel to America but were shipped to the Caribbean – there they were said to be Creolized; they acclimatized to their new home and inter-mixed with peoples and tribes from other parts of Africa. A melting pot of cultural and dance traditions was born.

~ Life in America:

By the 1800’s, offspring of the original African born slaves were dominant in numbers and a large quantity of them had now been relocated to America to the Greater Chesapeake area – to states such as Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Many of these slaves worked on the plantations of the American South and were initially prohibited from dancing due to the strict morality of the Protestant religion. A form of shuffling dance was invented by the black workers to overcome the rule of not being allowed to lift one’s feet high off the ground. The African rhythms and dance moves inherited from the past were mixed with European dance styles and a new African-American dance began to evolve.

In time, some plantation owners began to allow their workers to perform dances and competitions were arranged to determine who was the most skilled and agile of the dancers. Some slave owners gave out a small trinket as a prize to the winner; a new form of couple’s dancing called the cake walk was started – originally named as the best dancers were presented with a cake to award their efforts.

White society began performing dances like the cake walk in caricature form as part of minstrel shows. Although the manner of performance was largely an effort to ridicule the African

By LAUREN FEDOR

Lovers of art and music will unite this week at “Out of the Blue: Modern Art Jazz,” a sale at Swann Auction Galleries on East 25th Street. Thursday afternoon’s auction will feature 76 pieces by African-American artists who found inspiration in blues and jazz.

The sale, featuring works ranging from the figurative to the abstract, was planned to coincide with the CareFusion Jazz Festival, which rose this year from the ashes of George Wein’s defunct New York Jazz Festival. The pieces in the sale will be open for public exhibition through Thursday. Though Swann is not officially affiliated with CareFusion, the auction house has collaborated with the festival to reach out to jazz enthusiasts, according to the director of African-American Fine Art at Swann, Nigel Freeman. For example, the CareFusion web site lists Swann as a New York jazz “hot spot” alongside such landmarks as Birdland and the Village Vanguard; similarly, Swann links to the CareFusion festival on its own site.

“Out of the Blue” will be Swann’s seventh sale dedicated to art by African-Americans, a genre still relatively new to auction. Swann, which launched its African-American Fine Art department just three years ago, remains the only major auction house to regularly offer sales devoted to African-American art.

“They really are the first auction house to have the kind of focus they have,” said Valerie Mercer, curator of the General Motors Center for African-American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, about Swann. “For so long, black artists’ work was not really appreciated or valued.”

Mr. Freeman said he expects works by Romare Bearden to be among the auction’s biggest sellers. “Back Porch Serenade” (1977), a collage composed of bright-colored papers with ink and colored pencil, could go for more than $60,000. Mr. Bearden (1911-1988) was best known for his semiabstract collages, which echo Cubist influences and are typically comprised of photographs and painted paper. Themes of jazz and the blues are common in his work. A Harlem-based artist who spent many days and nights with such jazz icons as Duke Ellington, Mr. Bearden even worked in a studio above the Apollo Theatre.

Robert O’Meally, a Columbia University English professor who examined Mr. Bearden’s collages in his 2008 book, “Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey,” said last week that the art world is “on the verge of recognizing a truly international artist.”

In its short history, Swann’s biggest winner has been Aaron Douglass, a Harlem Renaissance painter whose 1944 piece, “Building More Stately Mansions,” sold in 2008 for $600,000 and is currently housed at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Two years earlier, one of his works sold at auction for $6,600.

Since 2007, Swann has introduced more than 100 black artists to auction. Mr. Freeman said at least eight artists whose works have yet to be offered will be showcased in “Out of the Blue.” They include Frank Stewart, the senior staff photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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The David C. Driskell Center for the Study Of The Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and The African Diaspora

1214 Cole Student Activities Building
University of Maryland
College Park , MD 20742
TEL: (301) 314-2615
FAX: (301) 314-0679
driskellcenter@umd.edu
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Gallery Hours:
Monday – Friday: 11am – 4pm
Wednesday: 11am – 6 pm

Office Hours:
Monday – Friday: 8:30 am – 4:30pm

The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, celebrates the legacy of David C. Driskell – Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Art, Artist, Art Historian, Collector, and Curator – by preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture. Established in 2001, the Center provides an intellectual home for artists, museum professionals, art administrators, and scholars, who are interested in broadening the field of African Diasporic studies. The Driskell Center is committed to collecting, documenting, and presenting African American art as well as replenishing and expanding the field.

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David Driskell: The Importance of Documenting African American Art

Born in 1931 into a family of Georgia sharecroppers, David C. Driskell is today a renowned painter and collector of art, as well as one of the leading authorities on the subject of African American art and the black artist in American society. His paintings can be found in major museums and private collections worldwide. His contributions to scholarship in the history of art include many books and more than 40 catalogues for exhibitions he has curated. His essays on the subject of African American art have appeared in major publications throughout the world. In establishing the Driskell Center, the University of Maryland has proudly taken up Driskell’s challenge to “grow the field.”

Prof. Driskell studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and received his undergraduate degree in art at Howard University (1955) and a Masters in Fine Arts degree from Catholic University (1962). He joined the faculty of the Department of Art at the University of Maryland in 1977 and served as its Chair from 1978-1983. He has been a practicing artist since the 1950s and his works are in major museums throughout the world, including the National Gallery of Art, the High Museum of Art, and Yale University Art Gallery, to name a few.

nmIn 1976, Driskell curated the groundbreaking exhibit “Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950” which laid the foundation for the field of African American Art History. Since 1977, Prof. Driskell has served as cultural advisor to Camille O. and William H. Cosby and as the curator of the Cosby Collection of Fine Arts. In 2000, in a White House Ceremony, Prof. Driskell received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton. In 2007, he was elected as a National Academician by the National Academy.

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