Nov 20th Session 4A

Presentation 1: Racism and Discrimination: Black Brushes with NAEA, Wanda B. Knight

Racism and discrimination are deeply rooted in the United States experience for racially diverse populations. The National Art Education Association (NAEA), too, has a history of racism and discrimination as Black art educators have historically struggled for social justice and equality within NAEA. NAEA came into existence in 1947, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Though NAEA Black conference participation continued to grow, since the first national convention held in 1951, Black art educators were continually ignored and marginalized.  The Black Caucus protested during the Dallas NAEA Convention in 1971. A committee prepared a statement, “a manifesto,” to be read at the NAEA General Session. Areas of concern that the Caucus highlighted included, Black art educators being excluded for active participation in planning and procedures; lack of representation in major conference keynote speakers; and absence in consultation regarding ethnic concerns and the larger picture of art education.  Grace Porter (now Grace Hampton) was chosen by The Caucus to present the manifesto that has lead to many changes within NAEA.

As a former chair of NAEA’s Committee on Multi-ethnic Concerns (then Black Caucus), I propose to interview Grace Hampton, Professor Emerita of Art Education, Integrative Arts and African and African American Studies at Penn State and I propose to research NAEA organizational archives to illuminate past struggles of segregation, marginalization and erasure within the National Art Education Association. This work has implications for discourse that addresses how racism is perpetuated through organizational structures, processes, norms and expectations, in addition to individual behavior and attitudes, and how racism operates at individual and systemic levels within organizations.

Racial discrimination can take place even when organizations do not mean to create inequities based on race. Moreover, discrimination can occur without awareness that it is happening. Nonetheless, a thoughtful examination of practices and policies within professional organizations and institutions, and by individual practitioners can set us on a course to discover how we can transform to be non-racist. The transformation starts with an awareness of how racism and oppression operate to restrict life choices, civil rights, and social mobility, especially within an organization’s own setting. This is an important goal towards making NAEA representative of all of its members.  

Presentation 2: Conjuring Hidden Histories: African-American Art Education at Hampton Institute, Jessica Baker Kee

This study examines the intersections of art education, African diaspora art, and African-American folkloric history at the Hampton Institute in Virginia from the late 19th century leading up to Viktor Lowenfeld’s tenure as professor and curator (1868–1946) in order to more deeply understand an underrepresented aspect of American art education. I take up Bolin, Blandy & Congdon’s (2000) call to uncover hidden and marginalized narratives in order to challenge ethnocentric master narratives of art education history. Lowenfeld’s vast contributions to the field are well documented, but his groundbreaking work at the historically Black and Indigenous Hampton Institute is lesser known. Furthermore, accounts of Lowenfeld’s work at Hampton tend to overlook the historical context in which he worked, and particularly fail to draw connections between his scholarship and earlier institutional efforts to preserve traditional African-American aesthetic and narrative epistemologies through the Hampton Folklore Society. This study analyzes historical texts, images and documents to argue the research on African-American art and folklore conducted at Hampton Institute in the late 19th and early 20th centuries provides evidence of a rich source of cultural curriculum whose pedagogical impacts have not yet been sufficiently explored.  In conclusion, this research suggests the need to recognize African-American contributions to American art education history as central, vital and foundational to the field’s origins.

Presentation 3: Augusta Savage: Social Responsibility and Early 20th Century African American Art Education, Sharif Bey

From the late 19th century to the development of community art programs and expansion of art departments at Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU), in the 1920s and 30s, the aesthetics, philosophies, and approaches of African-American art teachers changed dramatically. Prior to the 1920s students of color who sought training in the arts were compelled to work under the tutelage of White and European artists. However during the later part of the New Negro Movement, African Americans who trained in traditional universities/academies and gained notoriety in the early 1920s began to mentor and teach young aspiring artists. The period when these students began to benefit from the direct influence of seasoned African-American professional artists who shared a commitment to racial uplift is known as the Black Academy.

During the Black Academy many acclaimed African American artists modeled professionalism, confronted the “color bar”, and combined aesthetics, political consciousness, and social responsibility. Augusta Fells Savage (1892-1962) was undoubtedly an influential figure in the Black Academy in the 1930s and 40s. While establishing herself as one of the premier African American sculptors of the early 20th century, Savage began teaching art courses to young African American children in her Harlem basement studio. Later, as the director of the Harlem Community Art Center,Assistant Supervisor for the Federal Art Projects, and an active member of several arts/political organizations and artist collectives, Savage regularly congregated with African-American leaders, activists, actors, and poets to discuss how their collective efforts might increase support for African-American artists during the Great Depression. Despite economic challenges and racial inequalities, Savage nurtured, taught, and mentored some of the most noteworthy African American artists of the 20th century throughout her career. Although she is lesser known than her male counterparts, she had a profound influence on this era of African-American art education.

Through an analysis of primary sources found in The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Augusta Savage Collection along with testimonies from Savage’s former students and contemporaries located in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art Oral history Interviews this article examines Savage’s efforts to facilitate opportunities for a future generation of artists with a specific focus on her political agency and social responsibility in the 1930s and 1940s.