As part of its annual conference, the College Art Association (CAA), a U.S.-based professional organization that promotes art history scholarship, announced the winners of its awards for 2021.
The Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement, the association’s most prestigious prize, has been awarded to artist and scholar Samella Lewis. Mentored by Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White, whom she met while studying at Dillard University in New Orleans, Lewis is best known for creating a vast number of figurative works on paper that depict various aspects of the Black experience in the United States. Her art was included in the Hammer Museum’s acclaimed exhibition “Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980.”
Lewis is the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in art history from Ohio State University and has been influential as an art historian, creating a lane for Black artists and creating scholarship on their art since the ’70s, a time when the mainstream often ignored or belittled their art. Her 1978 book African American Art and Artists is still considered one of the most important texts on the subject. She also created documentary films on African American artists like John Outterbridge, Bernie Casey, and Richmond Barthé, and coedited the two-volume book Black Artists on Art (1969 and 1971).
Additionally, Lewis has held teaching positions at various universities across the country in her early career. After, she served as a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, she moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to become a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, where she became a pillar of the city’s art community.
In 1969, Lewis was hired as an education coordinator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. During her tenure, she advocated for the museum to more fully exhibit the work of African American artists and to hire them. She also cofounded a group called Concerned Citizens for Black Art that created guidelines for how the museum might better serve its community. After leaving LACMA, Lewis established three art galleries in L.A. and founded the Museum of African American Art at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall. She also served as professor of art history at Scripps College in nearby Claremont from 1970 to 1984, and organized exhibitions at its museum.
To see the full list of ward recipients, visit the CAA website.
