Jeff Donaldson’s Howard: A Center of Trans-African Art

Abstract

Jeff Donaldson’s HowardA Center of Trans-African Art Tobias Wofford (bio) Howard University and its Art Department enjoy a place of unusual distinction in the history of African American art. Under the guidance of the department’s founder James Herring, the Art Department and its University Gallery established Howard as a key institution in the visual arts of Washington, DC, and nationally through an innovative exhibition program. Further, Howard was central in the early development and interpretation of African American art history as the institutional home of the discipline’s two foundational figures, Alain Locke and James Porter. The recent March 2017 symposium held at the National Gallery of Art underlined the eminence of Howard as an arts institution. Titled “The African American Art World in 20th-Century Washington,” the gathering explored the rich history of African American art in the nation’s capital, a history at which Howard was often the center. While the art historical prowess of Locke and Porter and the curatorial activities of Herring are often heralded as the heyday of Howard’s artistic contributions to Black art, we should not let this overshadow the important role Howard played through the last decades of the twentieth century under the guidance of AfriCOBRA artist Jeff Donaldson. Donaldson served a twenty-eight-year tenure at Howard between the years of 1970 and 1998, teaching courses as well as occupying key administrative roles at various periods including chair of the department, head of the University Art Gallery, and a dean in the College of Fine Arts. Donaldson guided Howard University’s Art Department as it mediated the cultural repercussions of the Black Arts Movement through the 1970s and the rise of multiculturalism in American Art in the 1980s and 1990s. Most striking about these years of the department’s history is the extent to which the institution provided a platform for Donaldson and other AfriCOBRA members to test what the artist described as a “Trans-African” aesthetic. While in some ways the department seemingly broke away from the direction set by Herring and Porter, the Art Department under Donaldson continued and expanded an internationalist thrust that was a part of the institution from earlier years. When Jeff Donaldson joined Howard’s Art Department in 1970, the institution—and indeed the country—was at a cultural crossroads. The direction in which he would eventually lead the department in many ways stemmed from the historical context that brought him there. To give context to the moment of that transition, we must keep in mind the tumult of [End Page 29] the 1960s. The decade began with great hope for a more equitable society made possible by historical breakthroughs such as the 1963 March on Washington and the resulting Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, the violent resistance to equality seen in the examples of police brutality during the Selma Marches of 1965 and the assassinations of important Black leaders including Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., led to increasing disillusionment with the promise of the Civil Rights Movement. Growing frustration erupted in violent riots throughout the country in cities including Watts in 1965, Detroit in 1967, and, significantly, Washington, DC, in 1968 (Collins and Crawford). Howard’s Art Department also embodied the shifting paradigms of the era. Under Porter and Herring, the Art Department was known for its exceptionally interracial art scene that flourished in an otherwise segregated city. The University Gallery exhibited the work of a wide range of artists including those associated with the Washington Color School. In this sense, the department was eclectic and aesthetically agnostic, encouraging students to engage with a broad range of styles and art movements. Yet this aesthetic eclecticism (and an apparent political agnosticism) was increasingly untenable as the 1960s wore on and the Black Arts Movement gained prominence. Further, the changing times mirrored the changing faculty in Howard’s Art Department. The year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the resulting uprisings in Washington, DC, and other cities across the nation was also the year in which printmaker James Wells retired from the department and sculptor Ed Love was hired. Two years later, James Porter passed...