Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Monday, August 27, 2018 in HART, News, Vanderbilt University, VRC.

Rebecca VanDiver, assistant professor of African American art, surveys the history of Howard University’s Department of Art during its first fifty years in an article, “Art Matters: Howard University’s Department of Art from 1921 to 1971,” published in Callaloo (volume 39, number 5) by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Founded in 1921 by James V. Herring (1887–1969), the Department of Art at Howard University was the first stand-alone studio art department at a historically Black college or university. During the 1930s the department became the center for both the production and study of African American art, combining studio practice with the study of art history. During the era of segregation, Howard University offered Black Washingtonians access to intellectual and cultural offerings that were otherwise unavailable to them.

In her article VanDiver considers the various human, spatial, and ideological components that coalesced during this fifty-year period, which enabled the idea of African American art history to germinate within the Department of Art. Through this historiography, VanDiver seeks “not only to excavate the central role of Howard’s Department of Art in the formations of Black art histories (here African and African American) but also to ponder how one writes about an academic department (here a fine arts department) as a holistic entity responsible for both knowledge and cultural production.”

*Callaloo, front cover (volume 39, number 5, Art 2016)