A Brief History of the Aaron Douglas Collection
From the Foreward to Beyond the Blues: Reflections on African America from the Fine Arts Collection of the Amistad Research Center
By David Driskell

The Amistad Research Center has long been noted for housing one of the nation's most important collections of books, manuscripts and valuable correspondences on African American and other minority subjects. Perhaps lesser known, yet significantly important, is the Center's collection of art by African American painters, sculptors and printmakers; the core represented by one hundred works of art chosen from the Harmon Foundation's Collection of Works by Negro Artists. This core of the Fine Art Collection at the Amistad Research Center was named for Aaron Douglas, pioneering visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance who is here represented by thirteen paintings and four prints.

I would like to share here the story of how one of the nation's premier collections that spans two centuries and showcases works of art created by black artists came to be housed at Tulane University. Since space does not permit a detailed telling, I shall highlight the salient points of a most important decision.

In May of 1968, Dr. Albert Dent, then President of Dillard University, extended to me an invitation to discuss the art program at his institution. This was my first visit to New Orleans. Dr. Clifton Johnson had told Dent about the exhibitions I had assembled in the Department of Art at Fisk University where I had taught since the fall of 1966. The Amistad Research Center, under the directorship of Dr. Johnson, had been relocated to the Dillard University campus in 1969 after being housed at Fisk University since its inception in 1966. Dr. Dent and I discussed the need to invigorate the exhibition program at Dillard by bringing more work by black artists to the college. During our conversation, I shared some ideas that Miss Mary Beattie Brady, former director of the Harmon Foundation, had discussed with me about establishing an exhibition program at Fisk University that would serve the six historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) supported in part by the Board for Homeland Missions of the United Church of Christ. Unfortunately, the subject of an exhibition program at Dillard did not arise again prior to Dr. Dent's retirement. In the interim Miss Brady sent on indefinite loan to Fisk, upon her retirement as director of the Harmon Foundation in 1967, more than 400 works of art by contemporary Africans and African Americans to build a foundation for those very exhibitions.

In the fall of 1970, I was invited again to Dillard University by Dr. Broadus N. Butler, then president, to deliver a series of lectures on art for the Visiting Scholars Program in the Humanities. On that occasion, I visited the Amistad Research Center, then located in the college library, again to share some of Miss Bradley's ideas about an art exhibition consortium this time with Dr. Clifton Johnson. While discussing the subject of an exhibition center at one of the six HBCUs, we found that we were of like minds. Dr. Johnson had full knowledge of the art programs at three of the six institutions being discussed, having been previously employed at LeMoyne Owens College in Memphis, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and then at Dillard University in New Orleans. He asked if I knew about the gallery and exhibition facilities at the three remaining institutions; Talladega College in Alabama, Huston-Tillotson College in Texas and Tougaloo College in Mississippi. I had served as director of the Savery Art Gallery at Talladega College for seven years beginning in 1955 and knew that facility well. I was also working as art consultant with Ronald Schnell, chairman of the Art Department at Tougaloo College, in an effort to increase black representation in their impressive art collection that had been given to the college during the Civil Rights movement. The collection at Tougaloo was comprised of works by major contemporary American artists the majority of whom were Caucasian. In the end, only the art holdings at Huston-Tillotson College were an unknown to us both.

At the time, plans to relocate the Amistad Research Center to a larger facility in the French Quarter, the Old United States Mint were under discussion. Should this move take place, Dr. Johnson noted, there would be ample room to house an art collection and arrange for exhibitions at various venues. When the Amistad Research Center did move to the Old U.S. Mint in 1980, I reopened the discussion of Miss Brady's gift of several hundred works of art to an exhibition consortium should it materialize. We included Dr. Westley Hotchkiss, secretary for the Board for Homeland Missions, who became instrumental in keeping our progress on track, and our recordkeeping in order, since Miss Brady's donation was understood to be a valuable permanent gift.

In 1975, Clifton Johnson and I collaborated on Amistad II: Afro-American Art, an exhibition that told the compelling story of the 1839 Amistad incident and included my selection of works from the Harmon Foundation art holdings as well as others chosen from three HBCUs and local collections. The exhibition went on a national tour of ten museums and was a huge success.¹ As my career took me from Fisk University to a teaching position in the Department of Art at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1976, the process of documenting the Harmon gift to the Board for Homeland Missions became urgent. Grant Spradling, art consultant at BHM and his assistant, Jay Buell, helped with the physical transfer of approximately 250 works of art to the Amistad Research Center.

Miss Brady requested that I be appointed curator of the Harmon Foundation collection; an administrative position I held until an on-site curator was appointed prior to Dr. Johnson's retirement as director and after the Center had moved to its present location in Tilton Hall on the Tulane University campus. At Tulane, space to display a small selection of the Collection and allow for hands on study of the objects by scholars has increased knowledge of this important visual arts resource.

Now, Amistad Research Center Curator/Consultant, Dr. Margaret Rose Vendryes has made a broad selection of works of various media to grace the venerable walls of The New Orleans Museum of Art which roughly represents only a quarter of the Center's fine arts holdings. For many viewers this is a chance to have a first hand glimpse of the vast and often underrepresented aspects of diversity in American visual culture stored and preserved, as valuable documents – national treasures – must be.

-- DAVID C. DRISKELL

1. Amistad II: Afro-American Art, an illustrated 95 page catalog, was published in 1975 by the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries in conjunction with the exhibition, as well as Final Report, Amistad II published at the close of the exhibition tour recapping highlights and positive reviews.