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David Driskell Co-sponsored by Lectures Committee, Department of Afro-American Studies, Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle, Department of Art History, Chazen Museum of Art, and Visual Culture Cluster. The workshop reading is a selection from David Driskell: Artist and Scholar by Julie L. Mcgee. The book is on reserve at the Kohler Art Library, and the selection is available for photocopying in the English Department Library on 7th floor of Helen C. White Hall. Dr. David C. Driskell (Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Art, painter, printmaker, curator, art historian, educator, art collector, art consultant) has been will known in African-American scholarly circles since the 1960s when he was Director of University Gallery and Chairman of the Department of Art at Fisk University (1966-67), Dr. Driskell emerged nationally and internationally in 1976, during the American Bicentennial, as a curator of the acclaimed traveling exhibition, Two Centuries of Black American Art; 1750-1950 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Next to James Porter (author of Modern Negro Art, 1943), Dr. David Driskell is the most recognized authority of African-American art history. Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800-1950; Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, Abrams, 1987; Contemporary Visual Expressions, Smithsonian Press, 1987, African American Visual Aesthetics: A Post Modernist View, 1995, Smithsonian Press and The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby. Jr., Pomegranate Press are among his over 40 publications. Among his many commissions is the well known stained glass windows, "The Singing Windows", the Afrocentric Christian windows at Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. He has exhibited in numerous exhibitions from the Oakland Museum of Art in California to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. He has taught at Talladega College, Howard University, Bodoin College, the University of Michigan, Queens College, University in Michigan, and Obafemi Awolowo in Nigeria. He joined the faculty of the Department of Art at the University of Maryland in 1977, serving as Chairman 1978-1983, and has lectured at other universities and art institutions in North America, Europe, Africa and South America. Dr. Driskell has served on many prestigious boards, including The American Federation of Arts and The Cosby Foundation Scholarship Advisory Committee. Among his many awards in the arts are numerous grants, fellowships, and ten honorary doctoral degrees. By 1998, the University of Maryland founded the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans. The Center mentor scholars in the field in African American culture and continue the legacy of David C. Driskell. On December 20, 2000, Dr. David Driskell received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton at a White House ceremony. The citation to Dr. Driskell read, in part, "The President of the United States of America Awards this National Humanities Medal to David C. Driskell for opening our eyes to the beauty, poignancy and power of African American art. As artist, curator, scholar and educator, he has focused attention on black artists sparking worldwide interest among art lovers, critics, and historians and enriching the cultural heritage and history of our Nation". David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar, by Julie L. Mcgee, was published by Pomegranate Press in 2006. |
