ALTHOUGH the more-than-a-half-century career of abstract painter Sam Gilliam was universally recognized and expansive in its reach, his studio and home were in Washington, D.C., which the art world was late to recognize as a place for innovative art and shape-shifting artists. Despite the history surrounding the genesis and development of the Washington Color School chronicles that include such luminaries as critic Clement Greenberg and painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland the reputation of the nation’s capital for nurturing leading-edge visual artists pales in comparison to cities like New
Richard J. Powell, a leading scholar in African American art history and the John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, is currently delivering the seventy-first A. W. Mellon Lectures, the storied public series hosted by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Titled “Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect,” the six-part lecture spans social history, personal experience, color theory, music, art, and design. Taking a thematic rather than specifically historical approach, Powell engages art historical questions from a somewhat heterodox vantage,
Robert Farris Thompson, the celebrated Yale art historian whose scholarship highlighted the diverse cultural complexity of the African diaspora largely through his bestselling 1983 book Flash of the Spirit died November 30 in New Haven, Ct. He was 88.
Long recognized as an indispensable work on the history of African American visual art, Black Art: A Cultural History by Richard J. Powell, will be released this month in a revised and expanded third edition by Thames & Hudson.