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New Perspectives 2009

Art and the Academy: Views from Alabama Historically Black Colleges and Universities

FEBRUARY

2/17/08, Tuesday, 4:00 pm: “P. H. Polk's Images of Alabama,” lecture by Dr. Amalia K. Amaki, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art.

2/24/08, Tuesday, 4:00 pm: “Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African American Architect Designs for Booker T. Washington,” lecture by Dr. Ellen Weiss, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn.

2/26/08, Thursday, noon: “Robert R. Taylor and Tuskegee: An African American Architect Designs for Booker T. Washington,” lecture by Dr. Ellen Weiss, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.

MARCH

3/3/08, Tuesday, 4:00 pm: “Arts and the Black Academy at Mid-Century: David C. Driskell in Conversation,” lecture by Dr. Julie L. McGee, with Dr. David C. Driskell, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn.

3/10/08, Tuesday, 4:00 pm: “Hale Aspacio Woodruff, the Academy, and the Paul R. Jones Collection,” lecture by Dr. Amalia K. Amaki, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn.

New Perspectives, the Center’s annual lecture series focusing on Alabama’s rich visual arts heritage, continues for a third year with “Art and the Academy: Views from Alabama Historically Black Colleges and Universities”.  The programs will look at art made in and for institutions of higher learning, artists who were academically trained, and artists who taught in and shaped the development of those institutions’ art departments. The historically black academy is the particular focus of the series.

The project aims to bring visibility to the long-overlooked significance of these artists, institutions, and traditions to the history of American art.  Much of the considered work was created during a period when access and resources for African American artists and institutions were severely limited by laws and culture, yet the resulting murals, paintings, structures, and photographs play a defining role in the evolution of American visual culture.

Amalia Amaki, Professor of Art History and Curator of the Paul R. Jones Collection at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, will present two distinct programs for “Art and the Academy”.  The first looks at Tuskegee photographer P. H. Polk, who captured campus and community life from the late 1920s through the early 1980s. The topic of Amaki’s second lecture is the life and work of artist and educator Hale Aspacio Woodruff, who played a significant role in educating and advancing the work of generations of African American artists.  Amaki will discuss his far-reaching influence and will also consider the connections between Woodruff’s oeuvre and legacy and the Paul R. Jones Collection. 

Julie L. McGee is Curator of African American Art at the University Museums at the University of Delaware and author of David C. Driskell: Artist and Scholar (2006).  David Driskell will join McGee for a discussion of his art and teaching, in particular his formative years as an educator at Talladega College.  She will discuss the significant role of scholastic philosophy in his life, the underlying spirituality in his art and teaching relative to the concept of the universal, and his work and African American art in general in the context of his years in Alabama.

Ellen B. Weiss will consider the work and career of architect Robert R. Taylor, an M.I.T. graduate who spent his career at Tuskegee designing buildings, developing campus infrastructure, supervising construction, and heading the boys’ industrial department with its twenty some trades divisions.  Weiss will seek to deepen understanding of Booker T. Washington’s educational vision by examining the design and construction history of the campus.  Weiss is Favrot Professor of the History of Architecture at Tulane University.

“Art and the Academy” lectures will be held as a series in Auburn and individually in Montgomery, Normal, Talladega and Tuskegee.  All lectures are free and open to the public. Funding for the series comes from the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Auburn University co-sponsors are the Jule Collins Smith Museum, Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and Department of Art.  State partners include Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Talladega College, and Tuskegee University.    

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