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AfriCOBRA
AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) is an African-American artists' collective formed in Chicago in 1968. The group was founded by Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Nelson Stevens and Gerald Williams. OBAC and the ''Wall of Respect'' AfriCOBRA's founding members were first associated with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), established in 1967. This group, formed in Chicago to encourage education and performance amongst the city's African American population, was responsible for the famous '' Wall of Respect.'' The wall consisted of a series of portraits dedicated to individuals considered heroes and heroines of African American history. The ''Wall of Respect'' was ultimately destroyed in a fire in 1971. However, it served as an inspiration for further artistic representation of the African American experience. Jeff Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarrell, two OBAC artists who had contributed to the ''Wall of Resp ...
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Jae Jarrell
Elaine "Jae" Jarrell (born Elaine Annette Johnson in 1935) is an American artist best known for her fashion designs and her involvement with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Influenced by her grandfather, Jay Jarrell, and his work as a tailor, Jarrell learned about fabrics and sewing at a young age.Bouthillier, Rose, Megan Lykins Reich, and Elena Harvey Collins. ''How to Remain Human''. Cleveland: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015. It was learning these skills that set her on her path as an artist, fashion designer, and vintage clothing dealer. In 1968, Jarrell, along with Wadsworth Jarrell, Jeff Donaldson, Barbara Jones-Hogu, and Gerald Williams, founded AfriaCOBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists."Jae Jarrell"
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. 2015. Accessed September 26, 2016.
Her interest was to produce garments ...
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Barbara Jones-Hogu
Barbara Jones-Hogu (April 17, 1938 – November 14, 2017) was an African-American artist best known for her work with the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and for co-founding the artists' collective AfriCOBRA. Life and education Barbara Jones-Hogu was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ... and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Institute of Design in Chicago, as well as a master's degree in printing from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. She later pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Independent Film and Digital Imaging at Governors State University while in ...
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Jeff Donaldson (artist)
Jeff Donaldson (1932 – 2004) was a visual artist whose work helped define the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Donaldson, co-founder of AfriCOBRA and contributor to the momentous Wall of Respect, was a pioneer in African-American personal and academic achievement. His art work is known for creating alternative black iconography connected to Africa and rooted in struggle, in order to replace the history of demeaning stereotypes found in mainstream white culture. In the midst of the racial and cultural turmoil of the 1960s, a group of African-American artists endeavored to relate its artwork to the black masses. Aiming to use art for social impact, artists such as Donaldson strived to create an "art for the people"—an art form that was recognizable by and directed toward the common black folk, rather than a group of well-educated elite.Van Deburg, William L., ed. ''Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan''. New York and London: New York ...
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Gerald Williams (artist)
Gerald Williams (born 1941 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American visual artist whose work has been influential within the Black Arts Movement, a transnational aesthetic phenomenon that first manifested in the 1960s and continues to evolve today. Williams was a founding member of AfriCOBRA. His work has been featured in exhibitions at some of the most important museums in the world, including the Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. In addition to his influence as a contemporary artist, he has served in the Peace Corps, taught in the public schools systems of Chicago and Washington, D.C., and served as an Arts and Crafts Center Director for the United States Air Force. In 2015, he moved back to his childhood neighborhood of Woodlawn, Chicago, where he currently lives and works. In 2019, Mr. Williams was awarded The Honorary Doctors of Philosophy in Art by the School of the Art Institut ...
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Wadsworth Jarrell
Wadsworth Aikens Jarrell (born November 20, 1929) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born in Albany, Georgia, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduation, he became heavily involved in the local art scene and through his early work he explored the working life of African-Americans in Chicago and found influence in the sights and sounds of jazz music. In the late 1960s he opened WJ Studio and Gallery, where he, along with his wife, Jae, hosted regional artists and musicians. Mid-1960s Chicago saw a rise in racial violence leading to the examination of race relations and black empowerment by local artists. Jarrell became involved in the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a group that would serve as a launching pad for the era's Black Arts movement. In 1967, OBAC artists created the ''Wall of Respect'', a mural in Chicago that depicted African American heroes and is credited with triggering the ...
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Carolyn Lawrence (artist)
Carolyn Mims Lawrence (born 1940) is a visual artist and teacher known for her role in the Chicago Black Arts Movement. She earned a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in 1968 from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a thesis entitled “Teaching Afro-American Culture through the Visual Arts.” In 1967 Lawrence joined OBAC (Organization of Black American Culture) to create the Wall of Respect, a mural composed of portraits of African American heroes located on the South Side of Chicago. Lawrence collaborated with muralist William Walker to paint the section of the wall honoring Black Muslims. After her work on the Wall of Respect, Lawrence joined the art collective AfriCOBRA shortly after it was founded in Chicago in 1968. AfriCOBRA brought together artists in a variety of media to create a functional art that expressed a vision of the past, present, and future of the Black community and promoted education and political action. As a member o ...
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Organization Of Black American Culture (OBAC)
The Organization of Black American Culture (OBA-C) (pronounced ''Oh-bah-see'') was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, community activists, and others. The group was originally known as Committee for the Arts (CFA) which formed in February 1967 in Southside Chicago. By May 1967 the group became OBAC and included Black intellectuals Hoyt W. Fuller (editor of ''Negro Digest''), the poet Conrad Kent Rivers, and Gerald McWorter (later Abdul Alkalimat),"OBAC Writers' Workshop"
''Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History''. Encyclopedia.com.
OBAC aimed to coordinate artistic support in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality of oppor ...
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Organization Of Black American Culture
The Organization of Black American Culture (OBA-C) (pronounced ''Oh-bah-see'') was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, community activists, and others. The group was originally known as Committee for the Arts (CFA) which formed in February 1967 in Southside Chicago. By May 1967 the group became OBAC and included Black intellectuals Hoyt W. Fuller (editor of ''Negro Digest''), the poet Conrad Kent Rivers, and Gerald McWorter (later Abdul Alkalimat),"OBAC Writers' Workshop"
''Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History''. Encyclopedia.com.
OBAC aimed to coordinate artistic support in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality of oppor ...
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Wall Of Respect
The ''Wall of Respect'' was an outdoor mural first painted in 1967 by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). It is considered the first large-scale, outdoor community mural, which spawned a movement across the U.S. and internationally. The mural represented the contributions of fourteen designers, photographers, painters, and others, notably Chicago muralist William Walker, in a design layout proposed by Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy. Some of the artists would go on to found the influential AfriCOBRA artists collective. The work comprised a montage of portraits of heroes and heroines of African American history painted on the sides of two story, closed tavern building at the corner of Chicago's East 43rd Street and South Langley Avenue, in Bronzeville, Chicago, sometimes called the Black Belt. Images included Nat Turner, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Aretha Franklin, and Harriet Tubman ...
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Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Famously referred to by Larry Neal as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of Black Power," BAM applied these same political ideas to art and literature. and artists found new inspiration in their African heritage as a way to present the black experience in America. Artists like Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller pioneered the movement with a distinctly modernist aesthetic. This style influenced the proliferation of African American art during the twentieth century. The poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is widely recognized as the founder of BAM. In 1965, he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School (BART/S) in Harlem. Baraka's ex ...
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Black Aesthetic
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Famously referred to by Larry Neal as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of Black Power," BAM applied these same political ideas to art and literature. and artists found new inspiration in their African heritage as a way to present the black experience in America. Artists like Aaron Douglas, Hale Woodruff, and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller pioneered the movement with a distinctly modernist aesthetic. This style influenced the proliferation of African American art during the twentieth century. The poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is widely recognized as the founder of BAM. In 1965, he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School (BART/S) in Harlem. Baraka's exam ...
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Smithsonian Archives Of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C. and New York City. As a research center within the Smithsonian Institution, the Archives houses materials related to a variety of American visual art and artists. All regions of the country and numerous eras and art movements are represented. Among the significant artists represented in its collection are Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Marcel Breuer, Rockwell Kent, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, John Trumbull, and Alexander Calder. In addition to the papers of artists, the Archives collects documentary material from art galleries, art dealers, and art collectors. It also houses a collection of over 2,000 art-related oral history interviews, and publishes a bi-yearly publication, the '' Archives of American Art Journal'', whi ...
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