Edmund B. Gaither. Panel discussion "Kind of Blue" at the Northeastern University, 1986 October 19. Judith Wilson papers, 1966-2010. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
John Kinard provides an introduction to the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum (ANM) and the Sixth Anniversary Seminar. As the keynote speaker, Edmund Barry Gaither provides his thoughts on museums: the concept of the museum and its intentions, particularly the roles of specialty museums; the desirable museum scene; and neighborhood museums and their unique potential. Louise Hutchinson, ANM historian, presents the history of Anacostia with a slideshow. Zora Martin-Felton, ANM education specialist, talks about the importance of community engagement in the evolution of a museum and its exhibits, working with children in the community, working with docents, and the current ANM exhibit about Africa. Gregory Reynolds, former member of ANM's Youth Advisory Council, provides his thoughts on the evolution of ANM and the Youth Advisory Council; ANM staff and board of directors; and the relationship of ANM to the community of Anacostia. Warren M. Robbins, founder of Museum of African Art, discusses the functions of museums; and museums' past preoccupation with objects and current preoccupation with public interest. Theresa Jones talks about the relevancy of ANM to community action agencies, and how ANM has served community action agencies. Finally, David Challinor talks about traditional museums, and Stanley J. Anderson speaks about the community based, or neighborhood, museum. A question and answer session follows each group of speakers.
Seminar. Part of Conference Recordings. AV003071: part 1. AV003056: part 2. AV000792: part 3. AV000788: part 4. AV003054: part 5. Presentations often continue onto the following recording. Dated: 19730921 and 19730922. AV003054: undated.
Local Numbers:
ACMA AV003056
ACMA AV000792
ACMA AV000788
ACMA AV003054
General:
Title transcribed from physical asset.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of the materials requires an appointment. Some items are not accessible due to obsolete format and playback machinery restrictions. Please contact the archivist at acmarchives@si.edu.
Sixth Anniversary Seminar: The Relevance of Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Record Group AV09-021, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview of John Woodrow Wilson conducted 1993 March-1994 August, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Wilson discusses his childhood as a member of a family of middle class blacks from British Guiana (now Guyana); his father's grave disappointments in the face of racial discrimination; his parents' push for their children to succeed; early urge to read and draw; encouragement by School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston students who taught at the Roxbury Boys Club; his secondary education; and friends.
He talks about his education at the MFA School, Boston, and comments on such teachers as Ture Bengtz and Karl Zerbe and compares their exacting methods with those of Fernand Leger, his teacher in Paris.
His work of the 1940s prior to going to Paris; the importance of early awards and sales received while still a student at the MFA School; the excitement of sharing a studio with fellow students, Francesco Carbone and Leo Prince; and encouragement to stay in school during WW II with the promise of a European study fellowship after the war.
The great impact of his years in Paris (1948-49); the lack of racial prejudice; the liberating effect of Leger's teaching; his awe of the work of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca during a trip to Italy; and the deep impression made on him by seeing tribal art in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris.
Continued discussion of Leger; his teaching methods; and influences on his work.
His first teaching position at the MFA School; his involvement in civil rights in Boston; his gregariousness and the use of his studio as a meeting place for artists and political activists; his involvement with socialism in Boston and New York; and working in a socialist children's camp. He remembers meeting Paul Robeson, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and Bob Blackburn, who was then setting up his printmaking atelier in New York; marriage to a fellow socialist (June 1950); move to Mexico on a fellowship to study with Jose Orozco on the advice of Leger, only to find that Orozco had died; terrors of travel as an interracial couple through the U.S.; and different racial attitudes in Mexico and the U.S.
Living in Mexico (1950-56) and anecdotes of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera; his wife's meeting with Frieda Kahlo and seeing her collection of folk art; their free and cosmopolitan, if impoverished, life in Mexico; his work in a printmaking atelier and on the production of frescoes, and a lengthy aside about his brilliant brother, Freddie, who because he was black was not allowed to pursue his first love, geology, for many years.
Continued discussion of his experiences in Mexico; the dreary year (1957) he spent doing commercial art for a meatpackers' union in Chicago, a city he disliked; his move to New York in 1958, taking on commercial work to support his family, and teaching anatomy at the Pratt Institute.
Teaching art at a junior high school in the Bronx, and his gaining respect of students through special projects; teaching drawing at Boston University (1965-86), his approach to teaching including his demanding standards, the seriousness of the students, his opposing rigid attendance and grading rules, and colleagues, such as David Aronson who had created the School, Reed Kay, Jack Kramer, Sidney Hurwitz, and the University president, John Silber.
Working with the black arts entrepreneur, Elma Lewis, in setting up a visual arts program for the Boston black community (late 1960s-1970s), including the selection of a curator, Edmund Barry Gaither, a young art historian, who eventually established a museum of African-American art; his participation in various black art exhibitions, despite his belief that art should be seen regardless of the ethnic origins of artists; his move toward sculpture, beginning in the early 1960s, as a medium most expressive of black persons, culminating in the 1980s in a series of colossal heads and a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the U.S. Capitol (1985-86); and why he makes art and will so long as he is able.
Biographical / Historical:
John Wilson (1922- ) is an African American painter, sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, and educator from Boston, Massachusetts. Full name John Woodrow Wilson.
General:
Originally recorded on 11 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 22 digital wav files. Duration is 16 hr., 2 min.
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators. Funding for the transcription and microfilming of the interview provided by the Newland Foundation.
Boston University. School of Fine and Applied Arts Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with John Wilson, 1993 March 11-1994 August 16. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Black Boston : documentary photography and the African American experience / exhibition and catalogue by Kim Sichel ; with an essay by Edmund Barry Gaither
Art of the senses : African masterpieces from the Teel Collection / edited by Suzanne Preston Blier ; essays by Suzanne Preston Blier, Christraud M. Geary, Edmund Barry Gaither ; catalogue by William E. Teel with Suzanne Preston Blier
Massachusetts masters : Afro-American artists : Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in cooperation with the Museum of the National Center of Afro- American Artists, January 16-March 6, 1988 : celebrating 350 years of the Black presence in Massachusetts / Edmund Barry Gaither, curator
Allan Rohan Crite : artist-reporter of the African-American community / Julie Levin Caro ; introduction, Mark Pomerantz ; essays, Barbara Earl Thomas, Edmund Barry Gaither
