David Driskell
(1931–2020)David Driskell was an artist, art historian, and curator who played a pivotal role in bringing recognition to art by artists of African descent in the United States and beyond.
Biography
The subject matter of Driskell's paintings, collages, and prints refuse categorization: they address his memories of growing up in the South, evoked African rituals and art forms, depicted his summer home in Maine, and utilize forms from Modernist aesthetics and the canon of Western art.
His use of color and line led to profound explorations of the natural world, abstraction, and the Black Christian church. He was deeply influenced by formative educational experiences as well as his travels in Europe, Africa, and South America.
In addition to being a practicing artist, Driskell contributed essential scholarship on Black art that earned him the title of the “founding father of African American art history.” In the mid-1970s, he began to organize Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950, a groundbreaking exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that was the first comprehensive survey of Black artists’ contributions to American art. The exhibition—which refused the singular view of Black art that dominated scholarship at the time—underscored the ways in which Black artists had continually participated in and influenced American visual culture.
A dedicated and supportive teacher, Driskell taught at Talladega College, Howard University, and Fisk University. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1977. Upon the artist’s retirement in 1998, the University established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora. The Center supports the documentation, study, and presentation of African American art and holds the Driskell archive.
Driskell received a BFA from Howard University and MFA from the Catholic University of America. He received a Presidential Medal of Honor in the Humanities in 2000, and the Skowhegan Lifetime Legacy Award in 2016. He cocurated the 1987 Studio Museum exhibition Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America with former Museum director Mary Schmidt Campbell. The Studio Museum has presented his work in group exhibitions such as The Fine Art of Collecting I (1985); To Conserve a Legacy: African American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (1999), organized in collaboration with the Addison Gallery of American Art; and The Barden Project (2012).
Exhibitions and Events
David Driskell
(1931–2020)David Driskell was an artist, art historian, and curator who played a pivotal role in bringing recognition to art by artists of African descent in the United States and beyond.
Biography
The subject matter of Driskell's paintings, collages, and prints refuse categorization: they address his memories of growing up in the South, evoked African rituals and art forms, depicted his summer home in Maine, and utilize forms from Modernist aesthetics and the canon of Western art.
His use of color and line led to profound explorations of the natural world, abstraction, and the Black Christian church. He was deeply influenced by formative educational experiences as well as his travels in Europe, Africa, and South America.
In addition to being a practicing artist, Driskell contributed essential scholarship on Black art that earned him the title of the “founding father of African American art history.” In the mid-1970s, he began to organize Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950, a groundbreaking exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that was the first comprehensive survey of Black artists’ contributions to American art. The exhibition—which refused the singular view of Black art that dominated scholarship at the time—underscored the ways in which Black artists had continually participated in and influenced American visual culture.
A dedicated and supportive teacher, Driskell taught at Talladega College, Howard University, and Fisk University. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1977. Upon the artist’s retirement in 1998, the University established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora. The Center supports the documentation, study, and presentation of African American art and holds the Driskell archive.
Driskell received a BFA from Howard University and MFA from the Catholic University of America. He received a Presidential Medal of Honor in the Humanities in 2000, and the Skowhegan Lifetime Legacy Award in 2016. He cocurated the 1987 Studio Museum exhibition Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America with former Museum director Mary Schmidt Campbell. The Studio Museum has presented his work in group exhibitions such as The Fine Art of Collecting I (1985); To Conserve a Legacy: African American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (1999), organized in collaboration with the Addison Gallery of American Art; and The Barden Project (2012).
Exhibitions and Events