A native of Topeka, Kansas, artist Aaron Douglas has been described as "the father of black American art." KCUR's Laura Spencer reports on the first work by Douglas to be added to the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. By Laura Spencer
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Kansas City, MO – A native of Topeka, Kansas, artist Aaron Douglas has been described as "the father of black American art." KCUR's Laura Spencer reports on the first work by Douglas to be added to the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum.
Artist Aaron Douglas was a leading member of the Harlem Renaissance, a creative arts movement in New York City's Harlem neighborhood during the 1920s and early 30s. In his paintings, murals and illustrations, Douglas combined cubism and art-deco with traditional African and African-American imagery. The Nelson-Atkins's American Art Curator Margi Conrads says they'd been looking for a work by Douglas for a number of years before acquiring the third panel in a four-part mural series called Aspects of Negro Life.
Margi Conrads: The entire mural series gives us visually a snapshot of the history of the African-American experience from African origin...to the massive Northern migration to the industrialized cities of the 1930s.
The work is currently on loan to the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and it will be part of an exhibition called Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist which opens on September 8. Laura Spencer, KCUR News.