KU News Release

Spencer art museum’s celebration of Aaron Douglas opens in September

Stephanie Fox Knappe

LAWRENCE — A major exhibition celebrating the life, work and legacy of Aaron Douglas, an African-American from Kansas recognized as the most important visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, will open in September at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

The Spencer-organized exhibition, which will be on display Sept. 8-Dec. 2, is the first-ever national traveling retrospective of Douglas’ work. It brings together nearly 100 works from public institutions and private collections across the country.

Seven years in the making, the exhibition will include a public reception Sept. 28 in conjunction with a national conference on Douglas. The exhibition offers a variety of public programs, including an Oct. 27 concert by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers from Nashville.

Titled “Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist,” the exhibition will travel in 2008 from KU to Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. More information about the exhibition, national conference and public programming is online at www.aarondouglas.ku.edu.

Born to laborer parents in Topeka, Douglas (1899-1979) overcame many obstacles to pursue his passion for art and ideas. He was one of the first African-American artists to portray racial themes within the context of modern art. His ambitious pursuit of justice through his work continues to influence artists today.

Douglas graduated from Topeka High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1922 from the University of Nebraska. He taught at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Mo., before moving to New York in 1925. There he joined the cultural flourishing known as the New Negro Renaissance, or the Harlem Renaissance. His first job was in the mailroom of the NAACP magazine, the Crisis, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. He eventually became an illustrator for the Crisis and other periodicals. He earned a master’s degree at Columbia University and later taught at historically black Fisk University in Nashville.

Philosopher and writer Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated contemporary of Douglas’, dubbed Douglas the “father of black American art.”

Of special interest to the Spencer’s exploration of Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance is the Midwestern origin of artists associated with what seems a distinctly urban and East Coast phenomenon. Douglas and his good friend Langston Hughes spent their childhoods in Kansas, and other important writers such as Claude McKay and Countee Cullen also had Midwestern ties. The exhibition will illuminate not only the Midwestern roots of the “New Negro” outpouring in Harlem but also how Douglas’ influence extended beyond the Harlem neighborhood and the years of the Harlem Renaissance.

A socially conscious artist, Douglas vividly captured the spirit of his time and established a new black aesthetic and vision. Working from a politicized concept of personal identity, he combined art-deco dynamism with African and African-American imagery to produce a new visual vocabulary that evoked not only current realities but also hope for a better future. His work is the most powerful visual legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and has had a lasting impact on the art and cultural heritage of the nation.

The exhibition includes a scholarly catalogue edited by Susan Earle, exhibition curator and the Spencer’s curator of European and American art, with contributions by leading scholars of African-American art. Yale University Press is publishing the catalogue with the Spencer. Stephanie Fox Knappe, a doctoral student in art history originally from Marshfield, Wis., and now of Baldwin City, coordinated the exhibition.

Support for the exhibition and catalogue comes from the Henry Luce Foundation, with additional exhibition support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

More support was provided by the Capitol Federal Foundation; Kansas Arts Commission; Judith Rothschild Foundation; Breidenthal-Snyder Foundation; the World Company; Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts; Franklin D. Murphy Lecture Fund; Price R. and Flora A. Reid Foundation; Footprints; Aquila; A.G. Edwards and Sons; John and Nancy Hiebert in memory of Judge Cordell D. Meeks Jr.; Ann Thompson; the Kansas City Call; and KU’s Office of the Chancellor, Interdisciplinary Jazz Studies Group, Hall Center for the Humanities, Kress Foundation Department of Art History and University Theatre.

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