Indepth Arts News:
"Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art"
2001-04-06 until 2001-04-07
Howard University, Department of Art
Washington, DC,
USA United States of America
Howard University, Department of Art, and the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture in Washington, DC present the Twelfth Annual James A. Porter Colloquium entitled Migrations and the Diaspora: Caribbean and African American Connections on April 6 and 7, 2001. James Amos Porter was an African American educator, lecturer, painter, administrator, critic and advisor. He graduated from Howard University with honors in 1927 with a Bachelors degree in Art. In 1929, he studied at the Art Institute and was awarded the Arthur Schomburg Portrait Prize for his painting Woman Holding A Jug in 1933 exhibited in the Harmon Foundation Exhibition of Negro Artists. He received the Certificat De Presence from the Institute of Art and Archeology, University of Paris in August 1935. In 1937, he received the Masters of Art in Art History from New York University, Fine Arts Graduate
Center. In 1953, he was appointed Head of the Department of Art and Director of the Art
Gallery at Howard University. In March 1965 he was named one of Americas most
outstanding men of the arts along with 26 other teachers in the U.S. to receive the first
National Gallery of Art Medal and Honorarium for Distinguished Achievement in Art
Education.
To Register or Receive More Information, Please Contact:
Robert Hall, Mark Williams or Jennifer Morris
900 Jefferson Drive, SW, Room 1130, MRC 31
Washington, D.C.
202/357-4500 (phone) or 202/357-2636 (fax)
James A. Porters classic book, Modern Negro Art (1943, Howard University Press 1992) proved to
be one of the most informative sources to date on the productivity of the Negro artist in the
United States since the 18th century. It is a standard reference work on Black Art in America. It is said that Porters book placed African American artists
in the context of modern art history, which was both novel
and profound. For some, Modern Negro Art was
considered presumptuous and certainly premature. But
Porters bold and perceptive scholarship helped those who
subsequently focused their attention on African American
expression in the visual arts to see the wealth of work that
had been produced in the United States for over two
centuries. It is considered by many as the fundamental
book for those who delve into black art history. Lowery S.
Sims of the Metropolitan Museum of Art states, it is still an
indispensable reference work fifty years after its initial
publication, and Richard L. Powell states it continues to
provide todays scholars with early source information, core
bibliographic material, and other essential research tools for
African American art history. His writing career spans from
the late 1920s, and includes manuscript and monograph publications, book reviews,
introductions and forewords to exhibition catalogues, lectures, conference, symposia and
seminar papers, periodicals and newspaper articles. Your readers may be interested to note
that Porter published an article entitled Robert S. Duncanson; Midwestern Romantic-Realist
Art in America 39(3):99-154, October, 1951 and A Further Note on Robert S. Duncanson
Art in America 42(3):220,221,235, October, 1954.
Unique in the sense that he was totally involved in the creative expression which
characterizes the Black life-style in African, Latin American and African-American art as an
historian and was an accomplished practicing artist as well. His creative works form a solid
foundation upon which others may confidently build in the
future.
Romare Bearden wrote Jimmys pioneering efforts
are not really widely enough known...it was he that first
helped make the art programs in colleges, especially our
colleges (African American), less than a step child of the
other disciplines, it was Jimmy who did the real pioneering
research in the history of Afro-American art.
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