Reviewer: Janet Martineau
Venue: Marshall Fredericks Sculpture Museum
Discovering a new artist is one of the most exhilarating things to experience as a human being.
Especially when said artist isn’t new and was also a scholar, historian, curator and one of the world’s leading authorities on African-American art. And who, in the process of learning about him, introduces you to a long list of other black artists not well enough known.
Enter at the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum in Saginaw the national touring exhibition “David C. Driskell and Friends: Creativity, Collaboration and Friendship.”
Who? Exactly. Even the doctoral candidate guest speaker at Saturday night’s opening reception is relatively new to his name.
The outstanding exhibit features 68 works by 30 artists highlighting the artistic legacy of Driskell (1931-2020) and the importance of his relationships with fellow artist friends Hale Woodruff, James Porter, Elizabeth Catlett, Kara Walker, Keith Morrison, Jacob Lawrence and more.
The story behind the story here is not that far back in our history these were artists whose artwork was not accepted into exhibitions and museums because of their race – and sometimes because they were also black WOMEN.
Driskell helped pave the way.
On display are massive colorful abstracts…postal stamp size self portraits…landscapes of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Newport and Martha’s Vineyard … headshot drawings of Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin and Harriet Tubman… images of carpenters, mealtime and a mother and child…still life flowers and city scenes.
Oil, acrylic, etching, serigraph, offset printing, linocut, lithograph, watercolor, clay, collage, silkscreen, mono-print, carved marble, cast bronze, crayon, marker, ink, pencil, graphite, gouache. Name the medium and it’s there.
Breathtaking at every turn throughout the temporary exhibition gallery and hallway of the museum. Impossible to name a few favorites. Accompanied, as always at the Fredericks, with extraordinary signage and information about the artists and the works.
The exhibition was organized by The Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, established in 2001 and where he taught art from 1976-1998. A native of Georgia, Driskell attended segregated elementary and high schools before graduating from Howard University in Washington, D. C. in 1955.
He eventually curated more than 35 exhibitions of works by black artists, received the National Humanities Award from President Clinton in 2000 and was the subject of a 2021 documentary.
In her remarks Saturday night, guest speaker Heather Patricia Nickels essentially said not to worry.
Nickels, a native of Washington, D.C, is a doctoral student in the department of art history and archaeology at Columbia University in New York City, as well as an independent curator, archivist, arts writer and consultant.
Not too bad for someone who started out with plans to become a fashion designer, but got hooked on art history at Barnard University and only learned about Driskell in 2019 during those college studies.
“I didn’t know what a curator was until college, and I am not,” she admitted, “an artist.”
In her remarks Nickels focused less on Driskell and more on the art world in the days of segregation.
She told the stories of black artists who shipped their works to exhibitions or museums, so they could keep their racial identity a secret. And of white women who, in person, entered the of works black women artists by pretending to be them.
In the 1940s/1950s, she has learned, a Little Paris Group existed in Washington, D.C. that became a hub for upwards of 40 local black artists to hone their skills and exchange critiques.
And into that world, Driskell entered it and became “one of the pillars of African-American art history,” says Nickels.
Asked how she copes with being a modern-day black woman entering this unknown-to-her world of segregation and become an expert in it, she said: “I think what I was able to bring to that and what has come out of it helps. But it always is there. I just have to not let it get me down.”
The Fredericks Museum is located on the campus of Saginaw Valley State University and the Driskell show remains on display through Saturday, Feb. 21. Hours at the museum are at 11am to 5pm Monday through Saturday. Admission is free.
A 121-page catalogue about the exhibition — featuring each of the pieces and information about the artists — is on sale for $35.