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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Fallen Through The Cracks – Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was born on March 19, 1890, in Warwick, Rhode Island. She was an artist of African-American and Native-American ancestry, known specifically for her sculpture. In 1914, at the age of 24, Prophet enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. She was the only African American student and graduate amongst a predominantly white female school population. After graduation, She attempted to find work as a portrait painter full-time but was unsuccessful. She painted portraits of residents to earn money to travel to France and in 1922, Prophet moved to Paris to study sculpture at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She left the school because she believed she could teach herself faster than working under a mentor. One of her most prominent works, Negro Head, is a larger-than-life-size wooden sculpture. W.E.B. DuBois and Countee Cullen helped Prophet submit her work to exhibitions in the United States while she lived overseas and she won the Harmon Prize for Best Sculpture in 1929.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Courtesy of the Estate of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet ©
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Courtesy of the Estate of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet ©

In 1934, Prophet began teaching students at both #SpelmanCollege and #AtlantaUniversity, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and the history of art and architecture. She had hopes of encouraging the creative minds of youth, the encouragement she was not presented with during her early years as she often welcomed students to her own home. In 1935 and 1937, she participated in the #WhitneyMuseum Sculpture Biennials and the Sculpture International exhibition at the #PhiladelphiaMuseumofArt in 1940. Her sculpture, #Congolaise, became one of the first works by an African American acquired by the Whitney Museum. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet died on December 13, 1960, in Providence, Rhode Island at 70.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Merton Simpson

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Merton Simpson

Fallen Through The Cracks – Merton Simpson

Merton Simpson

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Merton Simpson was born on September 20, 1928, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was an abstract expressionist painter and African and tribal art collector and dealer. Growing up in a segregated South, Simpson was not allowed to take art classes at the city-run Gibbes Gallery where his mentor artist William Melton Halsey worked. In 1949, his wife Corrie, and former director of the Charleston Museum, Laura Bragg, sponsored his first solo art show. They held two separate receptions; “one for whites and one for whites who didn’t mind coming to a reception with blacks.”

Simpson was the first African American to receive a prestigious five-year fellowship from the Charleston Scientific and Cultural Education fund and left South Carolina for New York City after finishing high school. He took classes at New York University (NYU) during the day and at Cooper Union at night also working at a framing shop where well-known artists would frequent. He credited the frame shop for giving him his “real education”.

Merton Simpson, Maternal Orchestration, From the Estate of Merton Simpson ©
Merton Simpson Collection, From the Estate of Merton Simpson ©

In 1951 his work appeared in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and in 1954 his work was displayed in the Younger American Painters exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. The Harlem Riot of 1964 which Simpson witnessed firsthand, had a particular impact on his painting. The artist responded by creating the so-called “Confrontation” series of paintings that featured schematized black and white faces inter-meshed in an intense encounter. 

The Merton D. Simpson Gallery of Modern and Tribal Arts is famous for its exceptional collection of Tribal arts and for artworks by his contemporaries. As his knowledge and experience in the field grew he eventually became known as one of the most prominent dealers of traditional African art in the world and the international art world at large.

​​Merton Simpson died on March 9, 2013, in New York City. He was 84 years old.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Valerie Maynard

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Valerie Maynard

Fallen Through The Cracks – Cliff Joseph

Valerie Maynard

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Valerie Jean Maynard was born on August 22, 1937, in New York City, NY. She was a sculptor, teacher, printmaker, and designer who addressed themes of social inequality and the civil rights movement. She studied painting and drawing at the Museum of Modern Art, printmaking at the New School for Social Research, and earned a master’s in Art and Sculpture in 1977 at Vermont’s Goddard College.

Maynard taught at the Studio Museum in Harlem, at Howard University, the University of the Virgin Islands, and the Baltimore School for the Arts. She specialized in the preservation and restoration of traditional art by people of color. She re-contextualized motifs from the Middle Passage and the Civil Rights Movement into her work, offering commentary on the struggle of those in the African diaspora to achieve and maintain equal rights. In January 1977, Maynard was part of a contingent of hundreds of African-American artists who represented the North American Zone, exhibiting in FESTAC 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria.

In 2003, Maynard was commissioned to create a series of glass mosaic murals entitled Polyrhythmics of Consciousness and Light which is permanently installed in the subway station on 125th Street in New York City. In 2021, she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Valerie Maynard died on September 19, 2022, in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 85.

Valerie Maynard, Photography BMA/The Baltimore Museum of Art
Valerie Maynard, Photography BMA/The Baltimore Museum of Art

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Interviews and Conversations

The Identity Theft Collection by Chukes

The Identity Theft Collection by Chukes, A Film Series by ArtAboveReality

“This body of work is my creative voice. I have titled it, Identity Theft; Creations from a Social Consciousness.

I began working on the majority of these pieces at the beginning of 2016 and some date earlier than that. I initially created this work as a protest toward the televised brutality and killings of Black people and people of color. These killings were not only happening in America but throughout the world.

As I look back at my own history, as well as researching world history, I reflect on what I have been taught about myself and other darker-skinned people of the world. The work in this exhibit is my artistic representation of what happens when people or nations of people are stripped of their indigenous identity and re-taught a history that historically filters the truth and presents an incorrect version of past and present injustices. This filtered history, as I call it, is being used against us as a weapon of self-destruction.” – Chukes

IdentityTheft by Chukes: Episode One – Prehistoric Woman
IdentityTheft by Chukes: Episode Two – Eve
IdentityTheft by Chukes: Episode Three – The Time Traveler
IdentityTheft by Chukes: Episode Four – Royalty A.K.A. The Dope Dealer
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Fallen Through The Cracks

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Geoffrey Holder

Geoffrey Holder. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.
Geoffrey Holder. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Geoffrey Holder

Fallen Through The Cracks – Geoffrey Holder

Geoffrey Holder

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Geoffrey Lamont Holder was born on August 1, 1930, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was an actor, dancer, musician, and artist. He was educated at Tranquility School and Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain but made his performance debut at seven years old in his brother Boscoe Holder’s dance company.

Seeing him perform in The Virgin Islands, choreographer Agnes de Mille invited Holder to work with her in New York where he joined Katherine Dunham’s dance school and taught folkloric forms. From 1955 to 1956, he performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet as a principal dancer but left the ballet to make his Broadway debut in the musical House of Flowers.

Geoffrey Holder. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.
Geoffrey Holder, Woman With Flower, 1955. © Estate of Geoffrey Holder.

In 1973, he played a henchman in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die and also contributed to the film’s choreography. In 1975, Holder won two Tony Awards for direction and costume design of The Wiz, the all-black musical version of The Wizard of Oz. He was the first black man to be nominated in either category. He also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. 

Holder was a prolific painter, ardent art collector, author, and music composer. As a painter, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts in 1956. In popular culture, Holder is known for portraying Nelson in the 1992 film Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. Geoffrey Holder died in New York City on October 5, 2014, at the age of 84.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Tina Allen

Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.
Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Tina Allen

Fallen Through The Cracks – Tina Allen

Tina Allen

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Tina Allen was born Tina Powell on December 9, 1949, in Hempstead, New York.  She was a sculptor known for her monuments to prominent African Americans. Her sculpture focused on writing black history in bronze and emphasizing the contributions and aspirations of the African Diaspora. She was 13 years old when she began sculpting. Instead of following the assignment to make an ashtray, she made a bust of Aristotle instead. 

His artistic endeavors often reflected his strong anti-war stance, as many works critiqued the Vietnam War and warfare in general. A pivotal moment in Joseph’s career was in 1968 when he, alongside Benny Andrews and others, established the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC). This coalition arose as a reaction to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition, which notably excluded Black artists. Joseph emphasized the importance of Black Art being curated by individuals who deeply understood the Black experience.

Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.
Tina Allen, © Estate of Tina Allen. Source: The Museum of Uncut Funk.

One of her best-known works is a 13-foot bronze likeness of #AlexHaley, which was installed in the Haley Heritage Square Park in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1998. Her statue of #GeorgeWashingtonCarver is the focal point of the George Washington Carver Garden at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. Her 12-foot bronze monument to #SojournerTruth is displayed in Memorial Park Battle Creek, Michigan and the bust of #FrederickDouglass is on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; it was featured in a scene in the movie Akeelah and the Bee.

Allen also crafted a bronze medallion for the Women of Essence awards, which annually honor Black women of outstanding accomplishment and achievement. Tina Allen passed away on September 9, 2008, in Los Angeles, CA.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Don Hogan Charles

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Don Hogan Charles

Fallen Through The Cracks – Don Hogan Charles

Don Hogan Charles

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Don Hogan Charles was born “Daniel James Charles” on September 9, 1938, in New York City. He studied engineering at City College of New York before dropping out to pursue photography. He was the first African-American staff photographer hired by The New York Times. He remained on staff for 43 years until his retirement in 2007.

Charles started as a freelance photographer and appeared in major international publications with commercial clients including Oscar de la Renta, and Pan American World Airways. During his tenure at the New York Times, he photographed notable subjects including Coretta Scott King, John Lennon, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali.

Photography by Don Hogan Charles, © Estate of Don Hogan Charles
Photography by Don Hogan Charles, © Estate of Don Hogan Charles

His work focused on local hangouts and everyday people but he is most known for his extensive coverage of figures of the civil rights era. One of his most iconic photos is the photo of Malcolm X holding an M1 carbine while peeking out a window. The photo was commissioned by Ebony Magazine and became a symbol of the lengths the civil rights leader would go to, to protect his family. “By Any Means Necessary”. 

In 1967, Charles captured a photo of a young boy with his hands up walking in front of soldiers during the Newark riots, one of more than 150 racial riots in the country that summer. Charles’ work is in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Don Hogan Charles passed away on December 15, 2017, in Harlem, NY. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Varnette Patricia Honeywood

Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Varnette Patricia Honeywood

Fallen Through The Cracks – Varnette Patricia Honeywood

Varnette Patricia Honeywood

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Varnette Patricia Honeywood was born on December 27, 1950, in Los Angeles, CA. She was a painter, writer, and businesswoman who created paintings and collages depicting African-American life. She is highly regarded for using color and light, patterns, and textures. Creating positive visual images for Black children became one of her major goals. She focused on the history of African Americans, their sufferings and triumphs, and celebrated the strength and leadership of Black women. She often described her work as “figurative abstraction.”

She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Spelman in 1972, her Master of Science in Education, and her teaching credentials from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1974. She also earned an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Spelman College in 2005. Honeywood used her educational training to teach multicultural arts and crafts programs to minority children in public schools and as a graduate student, she taught art at the Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall.

Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood Birthday, 1974,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood
Varnette P. Honeywood,© Estate of Varnette P. Honeywood

Camille Cosby discovered Honeywood’s work on note cards and she and her husband Bill Cosby started collecting her works. This led to the inclusion of Honeywood’s artwork, including her 1974 painting “Birthday”, on the walls of the Huxtable living room on the set of The Cosby Show. She had been asked to create a painting to be included in the show’s pilot and different examples of her paintings were cycled through during the show’s run.

Honeywood’s artwork can still be seen on various television shows, movies, and book covers. She is recognized by contemporary artists today for her significant contribution, helping to envision and shape Black visual culture. Varnette Honeywood died at age 59 on September 12, 2010, in Los Angeles after fighting cancer. 

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Frederick James Brown

Portrait of American artist Frederick J Brown (1945 - 2012) as he poses in front of one of his paintings, New York, 1984. (Photo by Anthony Barboza/Getty Images)
Portrait of American artist Frederick J Brown (1945 - 2012) as he poses in front of one of his paintings, New York, 1984. (Photo by Anthony Barboza/Getty Images)

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Frederick James Brown

Fallen Through The Cracks – Frederick James Brown

Frederick James Brown

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Frederick James Brown was born on February 6, 1945, in Greensboro, Georgia. His family moved to Chicago and he was near the steel mills on Chicago’s Southside. There, he was exposed to the blues by musicians in the neighborhood such as #MuddyWaters and #HowlinWolf. Brown attended Chicago Vocational High School and then attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale, graduating in 1968 with a degree in Art.

In 1970, Brown moved from Chicago to New York City’s SoHo neighborhood which at the time was home to a variety of creatives. He collaborated with musicians, painters, and videographers and contributed to performing arts productions. The 2002 documentary film 120 Wooster Street depicts Frederick Brown’s loft studio, which grew to be a central gathering place for artists, musicians, writers, and dancers. 

Portrait of American artist Frederick J Brown (1945 – 2012) as he poses in front of one of his paintings, New York, 1984. (Photo by Anthony Barboza/Getty Images)
Frederick J. Brown, John Coltrane, 2005 © Estate of Frederick J. Brown.

Brown taught art at the Central College of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1985 and 1987. In 1988, he had the first solo exhibition by a Western artist at the Museum of the Chinese Revolution (now the National Museum of China) in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China exhibiting 100 pieces of artwork. His style ranges from abstract expressionism to figurative as his artwork was influenced by historical, religious, narrative, and urban themes.

In September 2008 Brown organized a symposium of artists, musicians, dancers, and poets at Cornell University on the Creative Movement of the 1970s. His work is part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo. Frederick J. Brown died on May 5th, 2012 in Scottsdale, AZ.

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)

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Fallen Through The Cracks Projects

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Selma Burke

Selma Burke and her bust off Booker T. Washington, © Estate of Selma Burke.
Selma Burke and her bust off Booker T. Washington, © Estate of Selma Burke.

Fallen Through The Cracks – Black Artists in History: Selma Burke

Fallen Through The Cracks – Selma Burke

Selma Burke

#FallenThroughTheCracks – Selma Hortense Burke was born on December 31, 1900, in Mooresville, North Carolina. She was a sculptor and a member of the Harlem Renaissance movement. She described herself as “a people’s sculptor” and created many pieces of public art, often portraits of prominent African-American figures. She worked in a wide variety of media including wood, brass, alabaster, and limestone as she examined human emotion and familial relationships in expressionistic form.

Burke traveled to Europe twice in the 1930s, first on a Rosenwald fellowship to study sculpture in Vienna in 1933-34 and in 1936 where she met Henri Matisse, who praised her work. Burke began teaching for the Harlem Community Arts Center under the leadership of sculptor Augusta Savage. She would go on to work for the Works Progress Administration on the New Deal Federal Art Project.  In 1936, one of her works, a bust of Booker T. Washington was given to Frederick Douglass High School in Manhattan. Burke won a graduate school scholarship to Columbia University, where she would receive a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1941.

Selma Burke and her portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, © Estate of Selma Burke.
Selma Burke and her bust of Booker T. Washington, © Estate of Selma Burke.

Burke’s best-known work is a portrait honoring President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms. In 1943, she competed in a national contest to win a commission for the sculpture, created from sketches made during a 45-minute sitting with Roosevelt at the White House. Burke was a member of the first group of women – along with Louise Nevelson, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Isabel Bishop – to receive lifetime achievement awards from the Women’s Caucus for Art, in 1979.

Back in Mooresville, black children were banned from use of the public library. Burke donated a bust of a local doctor on the condition that the ban was removed. The town accepted. Selma Burke died at the age of 94 on August 29, 1995, in New Hope, Pennsylvania. (Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and Smithsonian).

(Text paraphrased from Wikipedia and other sources. All Images are the property of the copyright owners. This clip is for educational purposes.)