Artist Spotlight: Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Still Life With Apples (1890)

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937), an African American artist, was known internationally for his paintings that focus on spirituality and imagination. The son of a minister, Tanner often depicted biblical scenes, utilizing both his academic training and what he saw on his visits to the Middle East and Africa.

Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before the American Civil War. He enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1879, where he studied under Thomas Eakins. After Tanner made his debut in New York and opened an art studio in Philadelphia, he moved to Atlanta in 1889, initially to open a photography studio. His business was unsuccessful, but he later taught a course in drawing at Clark College (Clark Atlanta University). He would move to Paris the next year, due to racial discrimination in the United States. Tanner enrolled in the Academie Julian in Paris in 1891, studying under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. He developed a looser, more poetic painting style in 1900, with which he rendered his travels around the world (Egypt, Algiers, Morocco, Jerusalem, etc.). Tanner made these journeys so that he could portray biblical figures and settings accurately.

The artist’s involvement in World War I and his wife’s death, in 1925, led him toward depression and altered his perspective on art in his later years. He would create less work that focused on biblical themes and more paintings of the war and portraits of African Americans such as Booker T. Washington; these later paintings stayed in his private collection. Tanner’s influence on other artists, especially African Americans, was notable, and he received many awards over the course of his life.

The Georgia Museum of Art owns a painting by Tanner, “Still Life with Apples” (1890), donated to its collection by Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson (along with other works of art by African Americans). Created before Tanner left the United States, it uses dark colors in the background to emphasize the light on the apples in the foreground. Other works by Tanner are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Des Moines Art Center; the Cincinnati Art Museum; PAFA and many more.

The Confederate Flag Belongs in a Museum

One of the objects in our galleries that is hardest to explain is the presence of a work of art that consists entirely of the Confederate flag. Especially this past week, it has been difficult to explain its presence, but we often see visitors move past it quickly, without taking the time to read the long label next to it. Middle schoolers on a school tour poke one another and point at it. It seems out of place with its surroundings, but it is a subtle, complex and powerful work of art.

Leo Twiggs created the work, which is titled "Georgia II." Born in St. Stephen, South Carolina, he was the first African American to receive an doctoral degree in art education from the University of Georgia. From 1964 to 1998, he taught at South Carolina State University, serving as chair of its art department and director of the I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium. Retired from teaching, he now focuses entirely on his studio work, serving as artist in residence at his undergraduate alma mater, Claflin University, in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

The Georgia Museum of Art organized and traveled an exhibition of Twiggs' work in 2004 ("Myths and Metaphors: The Art of Leo Twiggs"), complete with a catalogue that is now out of print, and acquired "Georgia II" in 2008. Created using batik wax-resist related to African folk techniques, it is one of many examples in which the artist addresses the flag and attempts to transform its meaning. 

Our director, William U. Eiland, wrote the following in his preface to the catalogue:

Leo Twiggs, with gentle but unswerving irony, takes the flag and claims it as part of his Southern heritage. Tattered, disappearing almost on its support, the standard about which there is so much controversy becomes in Twiggs's hands an ambiguous metaphor of unresolved conflict, yes, but also of a shared history. In addition to the Civil War, it calls to mind equally for Twiggs the suffering of slaves, the turmoil of Reconstruction, the indignity of Jim Crow, and even the promise of the Civil Rights era, and, of course, the aftermath, when this piece of cloth, venerated by some, reviled by others, continues to inspire argument and dissension. Twiggs transforms the image through shaping a new iconography for it, one in which he finds the possibility, albeit remote, of accord.

When President Obama said he believes the Confederate flag belongs in a museum this week, he was no doubt talking about a history museum, but in this case, we believe it belongs in an art museum, too.

Wanderer Symposium to Highlight Captured Slaves' Histories

In 1858, around the time the U.S. Congress outlawed the transatlantic slave trade, the Wanderer, a New York pleasure ship, illegally carried a group of 488 Congolese from Africa to the coast of Jekyll Island, Ga.

The yacht, originally intended as one of the most beautiful and luxurious crafts ever built, was bought by southern planters, loaded with zinc tanks and retrofitted with new decks so that nearly 500 enslaved people could be “tight packed” into a craft meant to hold no more than 140.

The stories of these people and their subsequent lives on southern plantations will be highlighted in “‘Where I Come From . . .’: The Wanderer Enslaved and Their Descendants,” an all-day symposium organized by Valerie Babb, director of the Institute for African American Studies and professor of English and of African American studies. The symposium will take place on May 15 at the Georgia Museum of Art and is free and open to the public. The event will conclude with a tour of the exhibition “Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19th-Century South Carolina” led by Dale Couch, curator of decorative arts, and a reception. For more information, please contact the Institute for African American Studies at 706.542.5197.

“A lot of people know about the history of the yacht and how it was part of the New York Yacht Club, how it was built, how it was commissioned,” Babb says. “Not so many know about the people that yacht brought over here. So I’m hoping that history becomes highlighted.”

When photographer, graphic designer and researcher April Hynes discovered a face jug that her grandfather had unearthed in Philadelphia in 1950, she contacted archaeologist Mark Newell, who discovered more of the jugs and linked them to the Congolese who came on the Wanderer.

“It’s kind of just serendipity, in a way, that she happened to contact him and he happened to tell her, ‘oh no, they’re created by Congolese slaves, who had been brought here and their descendants just kept on doing this,’” Babb says.

The jugs were meant to keep away evil and were sometimes used as funeral grave markers.

Babb says, “They became items that were treasured by families. Luckily, the Georgia Museum of Art decided to have this exhibition, and it dovetailed very nicely with the symposium.”

Besides illuminating the story of the Wanderer, Babb hopes the symposium will begin a series of collaborations among the Institute for African American Studies, the larger University of Georgia and Jekyll Island, which currently has a memorial where the ship landed that it aims to expand.             Babb would also like to collaborate with Brunswick public schools so that students can be involved in expanding the archive for the ship, and a member of the Jekyll Island authority hopes to produce an annual Heritage Day festival on the island inspired by the story.

“I think it is a really good balance of audiences,” Babb says. “It’s a nice blend between the academic, the artistic and actual life.”

Tradition Redefined

When the Georgia Museum of Art first opened its doors after construction of the new additions and renovations to the facility, one of the first exhibitions to grace our halls was “Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art.”

Initially, the collection was a travelling exhibition from a private collection and organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African American and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Tradition Redefined” comprises 72 works dating from 2007 back to the 1890s. The 67 artists, both celebrated and regional, who produced these paintings and sculptures were picked by the Thompsons for their “untraditional” narratives and conventions of presenting African American art and the African American diaspora. Little did we know, however, that the exhibition would become a prized component of our permanent collection.

Radcliffe Bailey

The Thompsons generously donated their collection to the museum in 2011, during the 50th-anniversary celebration of the University of Georgia’s desegregation, as well as providing the financial support to create a new curatorial position at the museum: the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of the African Diaspora. This curator will oversee the museum’s collection of paintings, sculptures, and other artistic media by African and African American artists as well as being an adjunct faculty member of the Lamar Dodd School of Art. This is not the first time the Thompsons participated in the museum’s and the university’s academic affairs. Larry, as a former U.S. deputy attorney general, has spoken numerous times at the university since 2001, and taught for a brief time at UGA’s law school as the John A. Sibley Professor in Corporate and Business Law before being recalled to PepsiCo. Brenda currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Barnes Foundation and the Board of the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries. She also joined the museum’s Board of Advisors in 2011. Obviously, it would be a gross understatement to say that the Thompsons value education.

Stephanie Jackson

The collection itself has given more variety and depth to the museum’s new galleries, but for the moment it has moved on from GMOA. An exhibition such as this one should be shared with as many people as possible, and “Tradition Redefined” is currently on display at the Rice University Art Gallery in Houston, Texas, as part of the university’s centennial celebration, where it will be until Nov. 18. Along with 15 other commemorative exhibitions around Rice, “Tradition Redefined” will help highlight and celebrate the 100 years of change that transformed Rice from a small university close to the middle of nowhere to an international and educational success. After that, the collection will travel to Knoxville, Tenn., to be featured in the Knoxville Museum of Art April 11 through June 16, 2013.

If you have the opportunity to see "Tradition Redefined" at Rice, the Knoxville Museum of Art or elsewhere on the road, we hope you stop by and take a look at it, as well as at any of our other travelling exhibitions on tour. As part of our mission, GMOA supports and promotes the spread of the visual arts as tools of education, but it is up to our patrons, both near and far, to use them.

Weekly Work: Georgia II

This week’s Weekly Work focuses on "Georgia II" by Leo Twiggs. The Georgia Museum of Art is thrilled to host this iconic artist’s work.

Twiggs was born in St. Stephen, South Carolina. He attended Claflin University for his undergraduate degree, and later studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and New York University. At NYU, he studied with the celebrated African American painter and muralistHale Woodruff. Twiggs received his doctorate in Art Education right here at the University of Georgia in 1970. He was the first African American student to receive a Doctorate of Arts (Ed.D) from UGA.

Throughout his career, Twiggs has been honored in more than 70 solo shows. As professor of art at South Carolina State University, he helped develop the I.P. Stanback Museum. He was named Professor Emeritus in 2000. Furthermore, Twiggs was the first visual artist to receive the Verner Award for outstanding contributions to the arts in South Carolina.

Twiggs is best known for the style of painting he developed, which makes use of the batik technique. This technique involves the artist using wax to prevent certain areas of cloth from being dyed. Master batik artists are especially skilled in color mixing. Perfecting batik is very difficult because layers of colors are blended to create the desired shade. The technique can be clearly seen in "Georgia II" and allows Twiggs to create many subtle textures. Twiggs often deals with the role of relics, images and icons in southern culture in the United States.

An African-American Legacy Lost to Flames

In an article in its October 2009 issue, Art in America mourns the loss of an important African American, Latin American and Asian collection. Peggy Cooper Cafritz’s collection, which included works by artists Emory Douglas, Romare Bearden, Hank Wills Thomas, Nick Cave and Norman Lewis, was engulfed in a fire July 29. The entire collection comprised more than 300 works of art, mostly contemporary. Cafritz ardently supports new art but says she will never be able to afford the range and calliber of pieces she used to own. She says she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to purchase again but adds, “I don’t think that I can live without it. No matter on what level, and what quantity, I will definitely collect again.” Not only did her purchases amount to an incredible collection of modern and contemporary African American art, but they were highly philanthropic in nature: She bought pieces by artists not well known in order to boost their recognition and revenue. By buying important, well-established pieces, she says, you boost your collection and make an investment. Buying artwork by young, lesser-known artists, which she started doing more and more recently, is always a gamble. Cafritz says she was willing to make those kinds of risky purchases because she knew she was helping contemporary artists build a reputation. Because of the numerous fundraisers, political dinners and other social events that took place at her Washington, DC, home, being in her collection “was a measurable boost to their sense of themselves as an artist in the world,” says Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Cruel coincidence would have it that her collection was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine only a month after the fire. You can take a virtual tour on the magazine’s Web site.

For more information, check out the full article in the Washington Post by clicking here