This collection showcases the rich legacies of HBCUs through artistic expression. Featured works include paintings, sculptures, murals, mixed media, prints, drawings, and fine art photography.
Ellison’s bust was created during his time as an art student at TSU. Under the instruction of Professor Carroll Harris Simms, artists would create self-portraits embellished with decorations like spirals and accentuated crown pieces, like in Ellison’s sculpture. These busts are inspired by Nok terracotta sculptures and Ife busts, which Simms saw during his travels to Western Africa.
John Arterberry was an artist who worked in the art department at Langston University from Tallahassee, FL. Martyr shows a woman wearing a top with a cross and standing barefoot in a natural setting. The woman looks straight ahead, slightly smiling as a small fire sits behind her.
Simms’ ceramic vessel is hollow, with an opening at the top, and has ridges and a dark maroon glaze. Carroll Harris Simms worked alongside Dr. John T. Biggers to establish the Texas Southern University Art Department. Simms taught sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry-making classes.
Simms’ ceramic vessel is round and stout, with ridges and a node at the top, and has a maroon and gray glaze. Carroll Harris Simms worked alongside Dr. John T. Biggers to establish the Texas Southern University Art Department. Simms taught sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry-making classes.
Jewell Woodard Simon was an internationally acclaimed artist, teacher, and poet from Houston, TX. Marine Land Fantasy is an underwater landscape drawing of fish and plants. Simon uses a variety of colors that illustrate aquatic biodiversity. Her use of lines evokes the depth of open water.
Jewell Woodard Simon was an internationally acclaimed artist, teacher, and poet from Houston, TX. Margaret is a plaster bust of a Black woman. Like her other sculptures, Simon details the subject's features, including her nose, mouth, eyes, ears, and hair texture.
Calvin Burnett was a graphic artist, illustrator, painter, designer, and art teacher from Cambridge, MA. Marcus Garvey is a portrait of its namesake, a Jamaican political activist. Marcus Garvey was a renowned Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist.
Oliver's painting depicts a group of men marching and playing drums and flutes, seemingly as part of a military expedition. The scene is believed to be drawn from the Battle of San Jacinto, the culminating battle of Texas's war against Mexico. The Black man may be Dick the Drummer, a free Black man who was part of the Texas army band.
Frederick C. Flemister was an artist from Jackson, GA. Man with Brush is a mannerist self-portrait depicting him in front of an arched window at an empty canvas. Outside of the window is a landscape scene featuring a lake, rolling hillsides, and mountains in the distance.
Thomas’s painting shows a barefooted man, looking upon a village and a herd of sheep from a distance. The movement of wind is depicted through his garments swaying around his body. Thomas has a particular way of creating movement in his paintings, especially in the clothing and scenery in his artworks.
This piece by Bennie Settles shows a man wearing a cowboy hat, looking out onto a mostly empty field with two horses grazing. Settles' works in the permanent collection frequently showcase his style of using rounded shapes and gradients to depict his subjects' muscles and deep care for portraying Black hair.
Alvin Smith was an artist from Brooklyn, NY. Man Fleeing from Himself depicts an abstract figure running within a centered circle. Smith creates the figure through the white space left by black pencil strokes.
This maquette shows a human-like couple with enlarged heads and hands. The artist suggests their intimacy by joining their lower bodies together. The full-scale sculpture features finer details, such as modified head shapes, embellishments, and greater use of negative space.
This terracotta was created by an unknown Texas Southern art student. The form suggests a surreal male and female pair warmly embracing each other. The artist employs negative space uniquely in this sculpture; additional gendered embellishments can be seen within the open heads. These exterior decorations were required by Professor Carroll Harris Simms.
Criner’s print shows an older man wearing a hat and holding a chicken. This print is a black-and-white version of Criner’s piece “Mr. Alvin White, Man With Chicken.” Criner learned printmaking firsthand from Dr. John Biggers and was the longtime artist-in-residence at Houston’s Museum of Printing History.
Patricia C. Walker was an artist from Worcester, MA. Man is a surrealist drawing that uses gothic symbols, such as the cross, crow on the tombstone, skull, and older man, to signify human mortality. It also uses Christian iconography, such as Adam and the Snake.
Armstead Mills' painting shows a woman holding a bucket and striding through a field of flowers, with a small dog at her ankles. Malindy, wearing a dress and carrying a bucket, is portrayed tenderly and beautifully in this colorful nature scene. Mills' brother, Edward, also attended Texas Southern as an art student.
Frederick D. Jones, Jr. is a twentieth-century artist from Chicago, Ill. Madonna Moderne depicts surrealist vignettes of a Black Madonna and child. The piece shows a veiled mother holding an injured baby and the same pair at a gravesite in a war-torn landscape. Jones also includes symbols of purity, humanity, war, and mortality.
Renee Stout is an artist and sculptor from Junction City, KS. Lunch at the Bush White House is a conceptual gothic painting that explores the intersection of Stout's critique of the Bush administration and numerology from an atmospheric perspective. Above a plantation-like landscape, Stout depicts a heart impaled by an ornate fork.
Leo Twiggs was an artist and art professor from St. Stephen, SC. Lullaby depicts a mother singing to her child in a rocking chair. The abstracted background shows farmland as the sun sets just beyond a barn.
This is a Luba sculpture from the Democratic Republic of Congo of a pregnant woman holding her stomach. The Luba are a matriarchal society and often create art centered around women, placing emphasis on their importance in their society. Some suggest that these figures are used to promote fertility.
Henry Wilmer Bannarn was a Harlem Renaissance sculptor and artist who worked in pastel and free-form sketching. Louisiana Nocturne depicts the nightlife of a rural town in Louisiana. The piece shows three couples around a two-story building marked Tavern Bar. The bar is between two buildings, and a person is on both porches.
Tommie E. Price was an artist from Tulsa, OK. Lost For A Name shows white and black abstract shapes and forms with thinly drawn lines. They are layered to create contrast, variety, and movement for the viewer to experience.
Oliver's painting is of a young girl, standing by herself, with large eyes and a mournful expression. She is positioned on dry, rocky land with a single flower in her hand, perhaps alluding to feelings of emptiness and desertion. Behind her is a bleak skyline, with birds overhead. They are the girl’s only companions in the painting.
Oliver Banks Jr. was an artist from Atlanta, GA. Loneliness depicts a lone valley outside of a mountain range. In the foreground is flat land with scantily leafed trees. Beyond that is a body of water that separates the valley from the foot of the mountain.
This maquette was created by a Texas Southern University art student. It is a lone figure with defined arms. The porous material and greenish hue evoke the appearance of a mossy rock.
Otis Galbreath was an artist from Jackson, MI. Let By-Gones be By-Gones shows a woman and a young boy sitting down in a room with wooden floors and plant barrels behind them. The woman sits in a rocking chair looking down to knit, while the boy sits across from her with a hand in his mouth. A green hat sits beside him.
Leon Renfro’s bust is unique within the Texas Southern sculpture collection. It is one of only two busts made from a white plaster (as opposed to the standard terracotta material). The sculpture is also rather bare, lacking the intricate embellishments and ornamentation that are typical of the work of Carroll Harris Simms’ students.
Simms’ large ceramic platter is made from clay with a splotchy white glaze on the top. Carroll Harris Simms worked alongside Dr. John T. Biggers to establish the Texas Southern University Art Department. Simms taught sculpture, ceramics, and jewelry-making classes.
