The Full Spectrum
Art from African American institutions presents a wide range of styles
by Angela Wibking
To Conserve a Legacy: American Art From Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Through Apr. 1
Tennessee State Museum
505 Deaderick St.
Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University
Corner of D.B. Todd Boulevard and Jackson Street
For information, call the state museum at 741-2692 or Fisk University at 329-8500
“I have no color on the brain. All I have on the brain is paint.”
—Robert S. Duncanson (1821-1872), African American artist
With the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the end of the Civil War two years later, African Americans were finally released from the 200-year-old bonds of slavery in this country. Not only were they freed in the physical sense, they were also free at last to learn and to create. Almost at once, institutions of higher learning for blacks sprang up—Nashville’s own Fisk University, founded in 1866, being one of these. Throughout the ensuing 135 years, these historically black colleges and universities have been instrumental not only in educating black Americans but also in preserving African American history and culture. In the process, they have also assembled priceless collections of African American art, as well as important holdings in European and American modernism, African art, and Native American art.
Nashvillians could travel thousands of miles to see these art riches—or they can simply travel downtown to the Tennessee State Museum and Fisk University to see “To Conserve a Legacy,” drawn from the art collections of Fisk, Clark Atlanta University, Hampton University, Howard University, North Carolina Central University, and Tuskegee University. The touring exhibition consists of over 260 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and photographs and is presented in six themed sections. The exhibition represents an impressive creative output, with works by 98 artists spanning two centuries and encompassing dozens of art styles and media.
Five sections are on view at the state museum, and one section is at Fisk’s Van Vechten Gallery. The Fisk portion of the show is called “Training the Head, the Hand, and the Heart” and includes vintage photography from a 1907 series by Leigh Richmond Miner, who trained his camera lens on the work and leisure activities of two Hampton University students. Meanwhile, the bulk of the show at the state museum takes viewers on an eclectic visual tour of black art, artists, and academia from the 1860s to the present day.
The portion of the exhibition at the state museum begins with works grouped under the theme “Forever Free: Emancipation Visualized.” As black colleges began to emerge during the post-Civil War era, these institutions focused on gathering documents and memorabilia concerning the emancipation of African Americans. Black artists of the time were also concerned with commemorating and celebrating their newfound freedom, and black colleges eagerly added these works to their collections. Works in this section of the exhibit range from literal representations of blacks breaking free from the shackles of slavery to more subtle reminders of what it means to be free.
Edmonia Lewis’ “Forever Free,” for example, presents a neoclassical marble vision of a male slave holding his broken chains aloft in one hand while sheltering a female slave kneeling in prayer with his other arm. Robert Duncanson’s oil paintings, on the other hand, demonstrate a command of the romantic style that dominated 19th-century landscape painting—a style that was associated exclusively in most people’s minds with white artists. Thus “Cottage at Pass Opposite Ben Lomand” (1866), which depicts not some bucolic Southern scene but an English-style thatched-roof cottage nestled in the hills on the edge of a lake, can be seen as a challenge to preconceptions of what a black artist of Duncanson’s time could or should paint, though the artist himself never meant it as such. He was simply acting on his own creative impulses and in the process became the first major landscape painter of color.
The next section of the show, “The First Americans,” is devoted to a lesser-known educational aspect of historically black colleges, several of which were founded to educate not only black Americans but also other peoples of color, including displaced American Indians. Almost from the beginning, Hampton University in Virginia saw the education of Native Americans and the collection and preservation of their culture as part of its mission. Many of the Native American artifacts in the show and much of the art depicting Native American subject matter come from the university’s collection. Included in this section are baskets by Clara Darden (1800-1910), the daughter of the last lineage chief of the Chitimacha tribe, as well as sculptures and paintings depicting Native Americans and vintage photographs documenting the programs that brought blacks and Native Americans together on campus.
Promoting positive images of African American ideals was a key concern at black colleges in the early years of emancipation, and the personification of those ideals in art is illustrated in the section of the exhibition called the “American Portrait Gallery.” Portraits here range from photographs of famous African Americans like Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Lena Horne to oil paintings of lesser-known but no less distinguished black Americans, such as the elderly couple depicted in their well-appointed middle-class living room in John Robinson’s “Mr. and Mrs. Barton,” painted in 1942.
Throughout the 20th century, African American artists were creating their own offshoots of various international modern art movements, from expressionism and cubism to action painting and abstraction. Fine examples of modern art by African Americans, including Sam Gilliam’s abstract canvas wall drapes and Romare Bearden’s collages, are featured in the final sections of the show at the state museum. In addition to such works by African Americans, the exhibition also features works by white artists from Fisk’s Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern Art, including Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1927 painting “Radiator Building—Night, New York.”
“To Conserve a Legacy” offers the viewer a long overdue look at the rich history of African American education and art over the last 150 years and a vibrant visual experience that can be appreciated, as artist Robert Duncanson implied, utterly without regard for the skin color of the artists. On both levels, it is an exhibition not to be missed.
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