In this inquiry into Driskell's life and work, art historian McGee analyzes Driskell's philosophical struggles as he sought to both express his feelings about racial strife in America and stay true to his art.

One of the most exciting and eclectic celebrations of African American art ever published, Narratives of African American Art and Identity showcases one hundred paintings, etchings, sculptures, and photographs from the collection of David C. Driskell. A true Renaissance man, Driskell himself is an esteemed artist, educator, curator, and philanthropist. His fifty-year career has been committed to promoting African American art. Included are works by John Biggers, Sam Gilliam, Lois Mailou Jones, Keith Morrison, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Augusta Savage, and James VanDerZee -- to name just a few. Each artwork is accompanied by information about the artist and the particular work. This book is the catalog for the exhibition of the same title, which travelled to various American museums through February 2001.

"This book represents a major event in the art world. It is the first book to encompass the entire span and range of black art in America, from unknown artisans and journeymen painters of the 18th century to such internationally admired 19th-century artists as Edward M. Bannister, Edmonia Lewis, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, through the artists of the dynamic "Harlem Renaissance" of the 1920s, and up to Horace Pippin, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden ... and reproduces works, chronologically arranged, by all the 63 artists in the show, their paintings, sculptures, graphics, as well as crafts ranging from dolls to walking sticks" --

Considered a premier assemblage artist, Betye Saar has been creating inspired pieces since the early 1960s. Her works are in the collections of notable museums like Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; The Studio Museum in Harlem; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has taught at the University of California and at the Parsons-Otis Institute, both in Los Angeles, and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Betye Saar is a comprehensive look at Saar's works, from the 1960 print Samsara to the powerful mixed-media assemblage Blackbird (2002), and a dynamic career.

"In Exhibiting Blackness, art historian Bridget R. Cooks analyzes the curatorial strategies, challenges, and critical receptions of the most significant museum exhibitions of African American art. Tracing two dominant methodologies used to exhibit art by African Americans--an ethnographic approach that focuses more on artists than their art, and a recovery narrative aimed at correcting past omissions--Cooks exposes the issues involved in exhibiting cultural difference that continue to challenge art history, historiography, and American museum exhibition practices. By further examining the unequal and often contested relationship between African American artists, curators, and visitors, she provides insight into the complex role of art museums and their accountability to the cultures they represent."--

This is an important new book published to coincide with a major exhibition of Faith Tinggold's new work and Studio collection. While the book explores Faith's work in her studio and her personal artistic journey, it is also an encounter between one artist and another, between Faith and her collaborator Curlee Holton. The mix provides unique insights into the struggles and triumphs of a woman who is at once an activist and an artist and whose achievements are admired throughout the world.

This volume presents selections from the highly-respected Cosby collection of African American art. Their introductions elaborate on their strong belief that African American families should themselves seek to preserve their cultural history and not rely on the mainstream. They also provide interesting background about how they began their collection and what owning the art has meant to them. The essay by Driskell (curator, author, and scholar) places each artist within the context of his or her era from the late 1700s to the present, and explores the historical, biographical, social, and political background of each period. Also contains biographies of the artists. Beautifully illustrated with 91 color plates and several other illustrations. Oversize: 10.25x13.25". Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America. As Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us in this definitive, defining, and immersive biography, the relationship between art and race was central to his life and work -- a constant, driving creative tension. Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years, but in the later 1930s turned to painting and became part of a community of artists supported by the WPA. As his reputation grew he perfected his skills, studying the European masters and analyzing and breaking down their techniques, finding new ways of applying them to the America he knew, one in which the struggle for civil rights became all-absorbing. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, he had begun to experiment with the Projections, as he called his major collages, in which he tried to capture the full spectrum of the black experience, from the grind of daily life to broader visions and aspirations. Campbell's book offers a full and vibrant account of Bearden's life -- his years in Harlem (his studio was above the Apollo theater), to his travels and commissions, along with illuminating analysis of his work and artistic career. Campbell, who met Bearden in the 1970s, was among the first to compile a catalogue of his works. An American Odyssey goes far beyond that, offering a living portrait of an artist and the impact he made upon the world he sought both to recreate and celebrate.

"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 has organized an exhibition of prints by David C. Driskell, scheduled to open in October 2007 at its new facility in the heart of the College Park campus and planned to travel to several other venues." --book jacket

A visionary artist and an influential teacher, Charles Alston (1907?1977) helped establish the Works Progress Administration's Harlem Art Workshop and was the first African American to be named a supervisor for the WPA's Federal Art Project. Alston's early studies of African sculpture influenced the appearance of the human figure in all of his work, and his experience as an American of African descent led him to express through his painting ?the injustice, the indignity, and the hypocrisy suffered by black citizens.' Alston was the first African American instructor at both the Art Students League of New York and the Museum of Modern Art and was a professor of painting at the City University of New York. Determined to assist artists who would follow in his footsteps, he cofounded Spiral, a renowned black artists? alliance. Alston's work is in the permanent collections of many prestigious institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Butler Institute of American Art.