HName: Driskell, David

DateBorn: 1931

Placeborn: Eatonton, GA

Datedied:

Placedied:

HDescrip: Artist, curator, and historian of African-American art. Driskell, the son of a Baptist minister, received a B.A. from Howard University where he studied art with Harlem Renaissance artist James Lesene Wells. He began his teaching career at Talladega College, a historically black college in Talladega, Alabama, where he curated his first exhibition, "Modern Masterpieces from the Guggenheim." In 1962, Driskell received an M.F.A. from Catholic University, and also studied at the Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in the Hague, and Fisk University (where he worked with artist Aaron Douglas). His 1976 exhibition, "Two Centuries of African-American Art, 1750-1950" held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art became the first scholarly exhibition of African-American art held at a major museum. In 1977, Driskell began teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park, serving as department chair from 1978-83. Since 1977 as well, he has been the curator of the Cosby Collection of African-American art owned by the entertainer Bill Cosby and his wife Camille. Driskell has received ten honorary doctorates in art, and fellowships from the Rockefeller and Harmon Foundations. In 1993, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton in 2000. Driskell served as President Clinton's advisor for the White House art collection, supervising the White House's first purchase of a painting by an African-American artist, "Sand Dunes at Sunset: Atlantic City," by Henry Ossawa Tanner in 1997. He became an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland in 1998, and in the same year, the University established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora. In 2002, the University of Maryland Regents presented Driskell with the Frederick Douglass Award for his commitment to "the ideals of freedom, equality, justice and opportunity." LMW

HCountry: United States

HBiography: "David Driskell: 'The Dean'" International Review of African-American Art 18, no. 1.; "David Driskell, Artist and Famed Chronicler of African-American Art to Receive Seventh Annual USM Regents' Frederick Douglass Award June 4" Press Release, http://www.usmd.edu/Overview/NewsReleases/driskell.html.

HBibliography: Two Centuries of African-American Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York: Knopf, 1976; Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. New York: The Studio Museum of Harlem, Harry N. Abrams, 1987; African-American Aesthetics: A Post-Modernist View. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995; The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2001.