2004-07-10
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
John Robinson's Art | Back in the early 1990s my stepmother inherited two paintings from her cousin Dorothy. The paintings whose three images you see here were done by a friend and coworker, a man named John Robinson.
I don't know much of the artist. I know that his work has been on exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery [1976] and at Washington DC's City Hall [1986].
He painted ~and began exhibiting~ at a time when established black artists rarely gained recognition. Thus it is all the more remarkable that Robinson, who worked as a kitchen helper at St Elizabeth's Hospital, (and not as well connected with loftier realms of cultural commerce)
was able to develop a memorable body of work and to then get his work exhibited. Largely self-taught, he worked in media that were less costly but always managed to keep up his efforts.
Mr. Robinson's exhibition with the Corcoran, incidentally, was completed with funds coming from the National Endowment for the Arts, as part of an effort to get local, and lesser known artists, the recognition their works warrant and deserve.
other sites of interest about African-American Artists
National Center of Afro-American Artists | Roxbury MA: exhibitions, collections, conservation, publications, research and education
Ijele | Civil Rights and the African American Artists: Have we Overcome?
Artnoir Index listings of Afro-Artists on the Internet
Don Mabry's Historic Text Archive | An extensive bibliography [1993] resource of Afro-American Artists and Art
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John Robinson's Art | Back in the early 1990s my stepmother inherited two paintings from her cousin Dorothy. The paintings whose three images you see here were done by a friend and coworker, a man named John Robinson.
He painted ~and began exhibiting~ at a time when established black artists rarely gained recognition. Thus it is all the more remarkable that Robinson, who worked as a kitchen helper at St Elizabeth's Hospital, (and not as well connected with loftier realms of cultural commerce)
was able to develop a memorable body of work and to then get his work exhibited. Largely self-taught, he worked in media that were less costly but always managed to keep up his efforts.
Mr. Robinson's exhibition with the Corcoran, incidentally, was completed with funds coming from the National Endowment for the Arts, as part of an effort to get local, and lesser known artists, the recognition their works warrant and deserve.
other sites of interest about African-American Artists
¶ 02:18
