Contributor to the prestigious Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft series on Netherlandish art.
Selected Bibliography
Niederländische Malerei der Spätgotik und Renaissance. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, M. B. H., 1929; Lucas van Leyden, 1494-1533. Leipzig: A. Schumann, 1924; and de Vries, Jan. Die Welt der Germanen. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1934.
Professor of Archaeology at University of Heidelberg, 1880-1920. Duhn was the son of an eminent Lübeck judge. His namesake was his godfather, another famous jurist, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861). Duhn was encouraged to study classics by his father, who had heard the lectures of Otfried Müller. The younger Duhn studied at Bonn under Franz Bücheler (1837-1908), Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, and Hermann Usener (1834-1905). After his studies, Duhn traveled widely through the principal lands of classical archaeology, Italy, Sicily and Greece. In 1879 he published “über einige Basreliefs,” a brief paper which proved to be essential for assembling the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome. It secured his reputation. After teaching only one semester at Göttingen, Duhn was called to Heidelberg where he was appointed professor of archaeology in 1880. In 1906 his Pompeji: eine hellenistische Stadt appeared. Duhn assumed the publication of Roman sculptural portraiture Friedrich Matz (1843-1874) after Matz’s death. In 1920 he retired emeritus from Heidelberg. The first volume of his Italische Gräberkunde appeared in 1924 and volume two only after his death. Heidelberg students he influenced included Gerhart Rodenwaldt and those whose dissertations he supervised included Rudolf Pagenstecher, Karl Schuchhardt, Bernhard Schweitzer, Hermann Winnefeld, Otto Weinreich (1886-1972) and Robert Zahn.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] De Menelai itinere Aegyptio, Odysseae carminis IV episodio quaestiones criticae. Ph.D. Bonn, 1864, published, same title, Bonn: Formis C. Georgi, 1864; Ein Rückblick auf die Gräber-Forschung. [Lecture honoring the second founding of the Universität, Karl Friedrich, Grossherzog von Baden.] Heidelberg: J. Hörning, 1911; and Jacobi, Louis. Der griechische Tempel in Pompeii. 2 vols. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1890; Italische Gräberkunde. 2 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1924-1939; “Eine Bronzestatuette der Heidelberger archäologischen Sammlung.” Abhandlung. Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sitzungsberichte. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 2 (1911) no. 6. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1911; Pompeji: eine hellenistische Stadt in Italien. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1906; [assumed publiscation after] Matz, Friedrich. Antike Bildwerke in Rom: mit Ausschluss der grösseren Sammlungen. 3 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1881-1882; “über einige Basreliefs und ein römisches Bauwerk der ersten Kaiserzeit.” Instituto Archaeologico centum semestria feliciter peracta, gratulantur juvenes capitolini qui per centesimum instituti semestre in Monte Tarpejo constiterunt. Rome: Typis Salviuccianis, 1879.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 100-101;Calder, William. “Duhn, Friedrich Carl von (1851-1930).” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 375-76.
Professor of Archaeology at University of Heidelberg, 1880-1920. Duhn was the son of an eminent Lübeck judge. His namesake was his godfather, another famous jurist, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861). Duhn was encouraged to study classics by h
Place Died: Cortina d'Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Classical
Overview
Classicist, fascist collaborator. Pericule Ducati grew up in a bourgeois family originally from Trento. He attended the University of Bologna studying Greek and Latin literature under Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) and archaeology under Edoardo Brizio. According to the Italian XIX century academic model, he studied classical archaeology at various universities including, in particular, Rome where he studied under the Italian art historian Luigi Pigorini (q.v.) and ancient Roman topography under Rodolfo Lanciani. His 1903 dissertation on classical sculpture involved one of the concepts that would occupy him his entire life: the transmission of antique iconography in other cultures. In 1906-1907 he visited southwestern Greece in order to observe archaeological classical tradition and to study history of Greek pottery under the Austrian researcher Emanuel Löwy (1857 -1938). After a brief appointment as Ispettore ai Musei e Scavi (1909), he was named to the chair in classical archaeology in Catania in 1912. He moved to a professorship in Turin and finally to Bologna in 1920. There he combined his teaching position with that of director of the Museo Civico. As Brizio and Löwy had imparted to him, he employed an academic German tradition of instruction scheme providing a clear and general preparatory course and more specific monographic part. The latter pedogogical technique was marked by visits to the local museums in accordance with the Vienna School teaching tradition. In 1920 he was appointed Classical archaeological history Professor at University of Bologna. He was twice Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Bologna (1923-1929 and 1943-1944), and also Member of the Accademia dei Lincei and he was a member of the High Council for Antiquities and Fine Arts of Italy. Ducati collaborated with the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, less, some say, out of a political than for the need to remain researching in his field. His political affiliations clearly forced his hand, however, in publications. In 1927 he wrote Origine e attributi del Fascio littorio, a book sponsored by the Association for Fascist Schools Libraries in Italy. He was a member to the PFR (partito fascista repubblicano) and was President of the Fascist Culture Institute of Italy. In the 1930s, he was selected by the Classical archaeologist J. D. Beazley and the Greek vase painting scholar Paul Jacobsthal to write a volume in their Bilder griechischer Vasen series, Pontische Vasen (1932). After the declaration of World War II, he was ambushed outside his home in Bologna on the Via Albertazzi, and struck by several bullets by the Italian partisans. He was transferred by a German ambulance to the hospital Codivilla heliotherapy Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL), where he died two months later of a related infection. Ducati is buried in the cemetery of Bologna. A portion of his library was donated to the Biblioteca Universitaria of Bologna as well as his letters and manuscripts. Ducati’s use of unorthodox sources and highly individual research attracted scholars who sought to reinvent the discipline themselves. These included the art historian Luciano Laurenzi (q.v.), who wrote a commemoration of Ducati, the archaeologist Maurizio Corradi Cervi (1904-1982), and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli.
Selected Bibliography
L’arte classica: con 12 tavole in rotocalco e 949 riproduzioni d’arte nel testo, Nuova rist. corretta della 3. ed. interamente riveduta, Torino: Unione Tip.-Ed. Torinese, 1956; Preistoria e protostoria dell’Emilia. Rome: R. Ist. di Studi Romani, 1942; La pittura etrusca, presentazione di Pericle Ducati. Novara: Ist. geografico de Agostini, 1942; Die etruskische, italo-hellenistische und römische Malerei. Vienna: Deuticke, 1941; Roma antica. Florence: 1940; L’arte classica. Turin: Unione Tip. Editr. Torinese, 1939; L’arte in Roma dalle origini al sec. VIII, Istituto di Studi Romani. Bologna: Cappelli, 1938; Storia d’Italia L’Italia antica : dalle prime civiltà alla morte di Cesare (44 a.C.). Milan: Mondadori, 1938; La scultura romana. Florence: 1934; La scultura greca. Florence: 1933 – 1935; Bologna nella storia d’Italia. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933; “Les forums impériaux.” Gazette des beaux-arts 6.Pér. 8.(1932): 65-88; “L’Ipogeo dei Volumni.” Emporium 74 (1931): 363-374; “Echi del Mantegna in Bologna.” Il Comune di Bologna 16 no. 4(1929): 19; “Il convegno dei triumviri in: Strenna storica bolognese.” 3 (1930): 7-17; “I vetri dorati romani nel Museo civico di Bologna.” Rivista del Reale Istituto d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 1 (1929): 232-249; Prassitele. Florence: Le Monnier, 1928; Etruria antica. Turin: Paravia, 1925; Guida del Museo Civico di Bologna. Bologna: Merlani, 1923; L’arte classica. Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1920; Storia dell’arte etrusca. Florence: Rinascimento del Libro, 1907; “L’ara di Ostia del Museo delle terme di Diocleziano.” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 26 (1906): 483-512.Giulia Savio Univeristy of Genoa-Italy
Sources
Serra Ridgway, F. R. “Ducati Pericle.” in: Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pag. 375; Paolo Paoletti, Vallucciole, una strage dimenticata, Le Lettere, 2009, p. 24. Quirino Giglioli. “Commemorazione del socio Pericle Ducati.” in, Rendiconti, Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 27 (1953): 111-135; Laurenzi, Luciano. “Commemorazione di Pericle Ducati.” [?????] http://www.archiviostorico.unibo.it/System/27/551/Ducati.pdf.
Citation
"Ducati, Pericule." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/ducatip/.
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Classicist, fascist collaborator. Pericule Ducati grew up in a bourgeois family originally from Trento. He attended the University of Bologna studying Greek and Latin literature under Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) and archaeology under
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Early compiler of data on architectural history. Ducarel’s work was inspired by Browne Willis in his Survey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Carlisle, Chester, Man, Litchfield, 1742.
Selected Bibliography
Anglo-Norman Antiquities Considered, in a Tour through Part of Normandy. London: Printed for the author, by T. Spilsbury, 1767.
Sources
Cauman, Samuel. The Living Museum: Experiences of an Art Historian and Museum Director, Alexander Dorner. New York: New York University Press, 1958, p. 22.
Early compiler of data on architectural history. Ducarel’s work was inspired by Browne Willis in his Survey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Carlisle, Chester, Man, Litchfield, 1742.
Medievalist historian who wrote some art history, especially on medieval building and society. Duby’s parents were Louis Duby and Marguerite Dimanche (Duby), provincial crafts workers of Mâcon. Duby’s early education was not the usual climb through a series of auspicious schools characteristic of notable French academics. He attended a lycée in Mâcon. At the outbreak of World War II, Duby joined the French Army, 8th Artillery Regiment, in 1940. At the conquest of France by Germany, he returned to school, but again, the closest school to his home, the Université de Lyon, graduating with his agregé des lettres, 1942, under the most modest of scholars, Jean Jules Déniau (b. 1886). He marred Andrée Combier the same year. He joined the Université de Lyon as an assistant under Déniau in faculty of letters in 1944. He moved to the Université de Besançon in 1950 as professor of medieval history, but the following year transferred to the Université d’Aix Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, as professor of medieval history, described by Willima Baldwin as “the most distant of the major French universities.” He received his docteur des lettres in 1952 from the Sorbonne, writing his famous dissertation, La Société aux XIe et XIIe siécles dans la région mâconnaise, under Charles-Edmond Perrin (1887-1974). Duby was awarded the Premier Prix Gobert from the Académie française for the book form of his dissertation the following year. Despite offers to join the Sixth Section o fthe École Pratique des Hautes Études (the section of the Sorbonne of the Annalistes), Duby remained at Aix until 1969. During this time Duby issued a number of texts on art history. His L’Europe des cathedrales, 1140-1280, and illustrative book, appeared in 1966 and translated into English the same year. The following year he produced a similarly-based text, Adolescence de la chrétienté occidentale, 980-1140. In 1970 he was appointed professor of history of medieval societies at the Collège de France. During his years teaching at the Sorbonne, he wrote Saint Bernard, l’art cistercien, 1976, and reissued L’Europe des cathedrales as volume two of a larger three-volume art treatment, Le Temps des cathedrales: L’Art et la societe, 980-1420. Le Temps des cathedrales appeared in English in 1981. Duby was elected to the Academie Française in 1987, retiring from the Sorbonne in 1992. A study of medieval imagery of women, written with Michelle Perrot, Images de femmes, was published the same year in both French and English. He and Michel Laclotte edited the series L’histoire artistique de l’Europe, 1995, from which the essay, “Art et société au Moyen-âge” appeared as a separtate monograph. He died of cancer in Aix the following year. Duby’s art-history writing was ancillary to his history and largely intended for a more popular audience. However, these books brought his brand of social scholarship to this readership drawn to the highly-illustrated format of the texts. The Age of the Cathedrals divided up the artistic accomplishment of the middle ages into themes such as “God is Light 1130-1190,” “Happiness 1250-1280,” etc. This theoretical framework in some ways forces itself upon a form tradition much more complex. There can be no doubt, however that his early research at the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, also an important monument for art history, provided him an important background from which to write. Methodologically, Duby embraced the Annales School, although not technically a student of the Annalistes historians Marc Bloch (1886-1944) and Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), an approach employing archival research to construct the daily life and mental attituded and avoiding ‘politics as history.’
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] La Société aux XIe et XIIe siécles dans la région mâconnaise; [art-historical writing only:] L’Europe des cathedrales, 1140-1280. Geneva: Skira, 1966, English, The Europe of the Cathedrals, 1140-1280. Geneva: Skira, 1966; Adolescence de la chrétienté occidentale, 980-1140. Geneva: Albert Skira, 1967 English, The Making of the Christian West, 980-1140. Geneva: Skira, 1967; Saint Bernard, l’art cistercien. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1976; Le Temps des cathedrales: L’Art et la societe, 980-1420. 3 vols. [vol. 1, Adolescence de la chretiente occidentale, 980-1140, vol. 2, L’Europe des cathedrales, 1140-1280, vol. 3, Fondements d’un nouvel humanisme, 1280-1440]. Paris: Gallimard, 1976, English, The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981; L’Europe au Moyen Âge: art roman, art gothique. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1979, extracts issued separately as, “Art et société au Moyen-âge,” English, Art and Society in the Middle Ages. Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2000, original French essay reissued as part of Duby and Laclotte, Michel, eds. L’histoire artistique de l’Europe, Editions de Seuill, 1995; and Perrot, Michelle. Images de femmes. Paris: Plon, 1992, English, Power and Beauty: Images of Women in Art. London: Tauris Parke Books, 1992.
Sources
Baldwin, John W. “Foreward,” in [and] Duby, Georges. History Continues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; Autour de Georges Duby: Galerie d’art du Conseil général des Bouches-du-Rhône, Aix-en-Provence. Arles: Actes sud, 1998.
Medievalist historian who wrote some art history, especially on medieval building and society. Duby’s parents were Louis Duby and Marguerite Dimanche (Duby), provincial crafts workers of Mâcon. Duby’s early education was not the usual climb throug
Art critic, novelist, journalist, and essayist. Du Bois was born to African-American couple Alfred Du Bois (c. 1835-c.1906), a barber born in Haiti, and Mary Silvina Burghardt (Du Bois) (c. 1831-1885) in Massachusetts. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Fisk University in 1888, Du Bois continued his studies at Harvard College, enrolling as a junior and receiving his second bachelor’s degree in 1890, followed by his MA in 1891 and Ph.D. in 1895. His thesis was on the African Slave Trade in the United States. Between 1892 and 1894, Du Bois studied history and sociology at the University of Berlin, and traveled throughout Europe. His visit to Munich’s Alte Pinakothek was his first exposure to the works of Albrecht Dürer (1417-1528), Titian (c. 148890-1576), and Raphael (1483-1520), which inspired him to give a lecture entitled “The Art and Art Galleries of Modern Europe” at Wilberforce College to the student Athletic Association. When he returned to the United States, Du Bois was appointed Chair of the Classics Department at Wilberforce College. In 1896, Du Bois married Nina Gomer (1871-1950). He also completed a sociological study at the University of Pennsylvania, and then moved to Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) in 1897, where he taught history, sociology, and economics.
Du Bois’s commitment to the visual arts began as he started searching for sources of spiritual openness in the African American community to include in his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903).The book explained his theory of “double consciousness,” in which African Americans experience conflicting identities resulting from their American citizenship and their African heritage. Though there were few active African-American artists at the time of his writing, he did highly praise artist Henry Osawa Tanner (1859-1937). Tanner fit the DuBoisan ideal of an educated, devout Christian who fulfilled his social responsibility to African Americans by producing cultural propaganda. Several African-American artists identified with Du Bois’s book, and in this way he gained acceptance in the African-American artistic community.
Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934) founded the Niagara Movement in 1905 which was a precursor to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. Du Bois became the editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. The Crisis became the cultural voice of the African-American community, where many prominent artists and writers published essays, poems, and short stories. Du Bois also used The Crisis as a discussion forum for the creation of a modern, African-American aesthetic. He, along with Howard University professor and scholar Alain Locke, routinely wrote exhibition reviews highlighting the work of African-American artists. Du Bois frequently promoted African-American creativity in his writings, and when the Harlem Renaissance emerged in the mid-1920s, his article “A Negro Art Renaissance” celebrated the end of the long hiatus of African Americans from creative endeavors. His enthusiasm for the Harlem Renaissance waned as he came to believe that many white people visited Harlem only for voyeurism, not out of a genuine appreciation of African-American art. In 1926, Du Bois sponsored The Crisis symposium called “The Negro in Art,” in which he chastised African-American artists for not assuming more political responsibility in their work. Du Bois worked closely with artists such as Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) and Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), whom he believed would lead the movement to develop a black modernist aesthetic through a “bold reconceptualization of beauty” (Kirschke 11). He continued to help young artists through The Crisis magazine until he resigned from the NAACP in 1934. As a widower, Du Bois married author, playwright, composer, and activist Shirley Graham (1896-1977) in 1951. Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1961. That same year, at the age of ninety-three, he moved to Ghana, where he worked with Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah on the Encyclopedia Africana, which inspired Henry Louis Gates (b. 1950) and Kwame Anthony Appiah (b. 1954) to write Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience in 1999. Du Bois’s health declined during his time in Ghana and he died in the capital of Accra at age 95.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States of America: 1638–1871. Harvard, 1895;
Aptheker, Herbert, ed.,Selections from The Crisis, Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1983;
The American Negro, Philadelphia, PA: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1928;
The Souls of Black Folks: Essays and Sketches, Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co., 1903;
American Negro Art, Baltimore, MD: The Modern Quarterly: A Journal of Radical Opinion 32 no. 6 (1925): 290, 292, 294, 296-297, 1925;
Criteria of Negro art. New York, NY: Crisis Publishing Co., 1926.;
The social origins of American Negro Art. New York, NY: The Modern Quarterly: A Journal of Radical Opinion, 3 no.1:53-56, 1925.
Sources
Foster, Frances Smith, ed. Andrews, William L. and Harris, Trudier. The Oxford Companion to African-American Literature, Oxford University Press, 1997 pp. 237-239;
Lewis, David Levering, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993;
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Una McGovern, ed., 1997;
Kirschke, Amy Helene. “The Intersecting Rhetorics of Art and Blackness in The Souls of Black Folk.” Souls of Black Folk One Hundred Years Later. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003.;
Byerman, Keith Eldon. Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Works of W. E. B.Du Bois. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
Contributors: Alana J. Hyman, Emily Crockett, and LaNitra Michele Walker
Citation
Alana J. Hyman, Emily Crockett, and LaNitra Michele Walker. "Du Bois, W. E. B.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/duboisw/.
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Art critic, novelist, journalist, and essayist. Du Bois was born to African-American couple Alfred Du Bois (c. 1835-c.1906), a barber born in Haiti, and Mary Silvina Burghardt (Du Bois) (c. 1831-1885) in Massachusetts. After receiving his bachelor
Scholar of baroque architecture, blended formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin with Geistesgeschichte of Max Dvořák for his methodology. He was born in Danzig, Prussia which is present-day Gdańsk, Poland.
Selected Bibliography
Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Danzig. (Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des deutschen Ostens. Series A) 5 vols. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1957-72. Barockmalerei in den germanischen ländern. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion m.b.h. ,1926.
Sources
Bazin 374; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1999, pp. 62-65.
Citation
"Drost, Willi." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/drostw/.
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Scholar of baroque architecture, blended formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin with Geistesgeschichte of Max Dvořák for his methodology. He was born in Danzig, Prussia which is present-day Gdańsk, Pola
Place Died: Vence, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): archaeology and Classical
Overview
Classical archaeologist; namesake of the “Droop cup” genre of kylix. Droop was descended from a Dutch family; his name was always pronounced according to that language. He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1904. He worked as an archaeologist, both as a student and then as a member, at the British School in Athens, participating in their excavations at Sparta, Thessaly, Melos, and Crete. His published findings on a particular broad-lipped kylix (Greek drinking cup) resulted in classical scholars thereafter referring to the genre as “Droop cups.” In 1911 he participated in the Egypt Exploration Fund at Abydos (Upper Egypt), under the direction of T. Eric Peet (1882-1934). Peet and Droop developed a dating system for pre-dynastic Egyptian pottery which was not subsequently adopted. He worked for the Admiralty during the First World War through 1921. That year he was appointed Charles W. Jones chair in Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. He remained at Liverpool, teaching for the rest of his career. As a scholar in Liverpool, Droop excavated in Britain at Chester, Bainbridge and Lancaster. He also participated in the Niebla, Spain, digs. He edited the Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology from 1937 until his retirement in 1948. Droop cups exist in many museum and classical-object collections.
Selected Bibliography
“Two Cyrenaic Kylikes.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 28 (1908): 175-179; “Pottery,” in Dawkins, Richard McGillivray, ed. The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, Excavated and Described by Members of the British School at Athens, 1906-1910. London: Council of Learned Societies/Macmillan, 1929; translated, Xanthoudides, Stephanos Antoniou. The Vaulted Tombs of Mesará: an Account of Some Early Cemeteries of Southern Crete. Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1924; Archaeological Excavation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915.
Sources
[obituary:] “Prof. J. P. Droop Classical Archaeology.” Times (London) October 7, 1963, p. 15.
Citation
"Droop, J. P.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/droopj/.
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Classical archaeologist; namesake of the “Droop cup” genre of kylix. Droop was descended from a Dutch family; his name was always pronounced according to that language. He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduat
Subject Area(s): African American and Modern (style or period)
Career(s): artists (visual artists), curators, educators, and museologists
Institution(s): Howard University and University of Maryland
Overview
African-American artist, curator, and historian of African-American art. Driskell was the son of Baptist minister George Washington Driskell, and Mary Cloud Driskell. Driskell’s family heavily influenced his career in art, as his father, a painter of religious subjects, and his mother, a quilter, both influenced his choice of career, and his grandfather was a sculptor. Driskell grew up in western North Carolina, attending segregated schools.Though Driskell was awarded a $90 scholarship to Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, he chose to attend Howard University in Washington D.C. Driskell was studying painting and history there, until he met James A. Porter, an acclaimed African-American art historian and a professor at the university, who encouraged Driskell to pursue art history. Driskell studied under him and other Howard faculty, including James V. Herring (1887-1969), who founded the Howard University Department of Art in 1922, and Mary Beattie Brady (d. 1981), the director of the Harmon Foundation, an organization that collected work by African Americans. In 1952 he married Thelma Grace DeLoatch and the following year he received a summer scholarship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1955, Driskell received a B.A. in art from Howard University.
He began his teaching career at Talladega College, the oldest private historically black college in Alabama, succeeding Professor Claude Clarke (1915-2001). There he curated his first exhibition, Modern Masterpieces from the Guggenheim, which brought works from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to the Savery Library at Talladega College. At Talladega, Driskell, like Porter, combined curatorial work and visual arts practice. Driskell ran the art department himself: he provided courses in studio art, art history, and art education while also serving as the art gallery director. Driskell received an M.F.A. from Catholic University in 1962 and later explored postgraduate studies in Europe at the Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in The Hague and Fisk University, where he worked with artist Aaron Douglas (1899-1979). He then taught at Howard University alongside his former instructors, including Harlem Renaissance artist James Lesesne Wells (1902-1993), Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998), and Lila Olivia Asher (1921-2021). He also served as visiting professor of art at several other universities, including Bowdoin College, the University of Michigan, Queens College and Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
Driskell’s 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. This landmark exhibition later traveled to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia and the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition featured more than 200 works by 63 artists, as well as anonymous crafts workers, and brought visibility to the essential contributions of Black artists to American visual culture.
In 1977, Driskell began teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park, serving as department chair from 1978 to 1983. Since 1977 as well, he was the curator of The Camille O. and William H. Cosby Collection of African American Art owned by the entertainer and his wife. Driskell 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 purchase of a painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) Sand Dunes at Sunset: Atlantic City, the first painting the White House would acquire from an African-American artist, 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 Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and 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.” In 2005, the High Museum of Art established the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award to honor and celebrate contributions to the field of African American art and art history. In 2007, Driskell was elected as a national academician by the National Academy. In 2016, Driskell received the Lifetime Legacy Award from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and in 2018, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Driskell died in 2020 from complications of the COVID-19 virus.
Selected Bibliography
and Simon, Leonard. Two Centuries of African-American Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York: Knopf, 1976;
and Lewis, David Levering, Willis, Deborah, and Campbell, Mary Schmidt. Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. New York: The Studio Museum of Harlem, Harry N. Abrams, 1987;
Contemporary visual expressions: the art of Sam Gilliam, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Keith Morrison, William T. Williams. Washington, D.C.: Published for the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987;
Hidden heritage: Afro-American art, 1800-1950. San Francisco: Art Museum Association of America, 1987;
and Reynolds, Gary A. and Wright, Beryl J. Against the odds: African-American artists and the Harmon Foundation.Newark, N.J.: Newark Museum, 1989;
and Wardlaw, Alvia J., Rozelle, Robert V., Brettell, Richard R. Black art: ancestral legacy the African impulse in African-American art. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1990;
and Cosby, Camille O., Cosby, Bill, and Hanks, René. The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2001;
and Uzelac, Constance Porter, García, Alejandro, Uzelac, Milan. James A. Porter (1905-1970), From Me to You: The Works of Artist James A. Porter. New York : N’Namdi, 2006;
and Harris, Shawnya L. Expanding tradition: selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson collection. Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2017.
McGee, Julie L. David C. Driskell: artist and scholar. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2006;
The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. “David C. Driskell: An Artist and Scholar.” https://driskellcenter.umd.edu/about/david-c-driskell;
African-American artist, curator, and historian of African-American art. Driskell was the son of Baptist minister George Washington Driskell, and Mary Cloud Driskell. Driskell’s family heavily influenced his career in art, as his father, a painter
