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.
Calvin Burnett was a graphic artist, illustrator, painter, designer, and art teacher from Cambridge, MA. Girl Waiting depicts a young girl lying asleep with dark shadows above her.
Calvin Burnett was a graphic artist, illustrator, painter, designer, and art teacher from Cambridge, MA. Girl in Black depicts a girl standing with a smug expression, wearing a Black garment. The dress blends into the dark background, while white scratches add texture to the piece.
Norma Morgan was a painter from New Haven, Connecticut. Ghost Light shows a house and a shed that sit in the close foreground. Their wooden structures are cast in heavy shadow. There is an atmospheric background remaining with a gloomy color palette of gray, black, and white.
Jewell Woodard Simon was an internationally acclaimed artist, teacher, and poet from Houston, TX. Ghost Harbour City depicts an urbanscape and a dock with moored boats. Horizontal and vertical lines shape the city and water and create depth. Simon blends colors to detail the light, shadow, and shape of each building and the seascape.
Set against a background of shotgun houses, Black people engage in a struggle to break free from chains and physical limitations. Extreme musculature and angel wings suggest supernatural strengths. A motif in Settles’ work is the power and beauty of Black hair.
Randolph’s painting shows a mother in an African dress wearing her child on her back with a chitenge. The wall is graffitied with words like pig, power, and love, and an image of a Black power fist. The work contrasts the African aesthetic of the figures with the African-American political graffiti, expressing an idea of global Blackness.
This painting by Roy Vinson Thomas is a landscape piece depicting a tree stump and mushrooms in cubist style. Cubism depicts forms using multiple geometric shapes to create depth. Many works in Texas Southern's permanent collection, particularly from the late 1970s, use this art style.
This sculpture is of a mother wrapping her arms around a childlike figure. The artist uses geometric shapes and line work to decorate the bodies and facial features and animate their embrace. Parental protection and the mother-child relationship are frequent subject matters displayed in students' work at Texas Southern University.
This painting by Jesse Sifuentes shows a landscape scene featuring cactuses. Several TSU art alumni have recalled that Dr. John Biggers taught them based on themes more than techniques. Many works from the 1970s use geometric styles, perhaps a reflection of lessons from the time. Sifuentes went on to become a ceramics professor at Texas Southern.
Randolph’s painting shows giant pearls, embedded in oversized shells, in front of a group of three Black women. The pearls reference the beauty of the women, whose hair extends out from their heads to form a unifying pattern between them. Towards the bottom, a leaf fan implies regalness, while the small mask indicates African heritage.
Floyd Coleman was an art historian, educator, and painter in Washington, D.C. Garden is an abstract depiction of its namesake. Coleman uses splotches of vibrant colors on top of a black background.
This drawing combines elements of traditional African sculpture and futuristic motifs. The figures’ faces resemble Ashanti akuaba (fertility dolls). The seated mother with a child is also a common motif in African sculpture, as seen in some works from the University Museum’s collection. The figures’ hair textures suggest a more futuristic design.
In a triptych style, Williams’ mural shows three central themes: a family gathered around a newborn (religion), seated near a hearth (home), and working together in the fields (labor). Black rural life is a major subject in the Hannah Hall murals.
Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs was an artist, historian, teacher, and writer from St. Rose, LA. Friends is a print depicting an interracial friendship. Two girls, one black and the other white, are sitting on a loveseat in front of a patterned curtain. This radical image of race relations was created during the height of the Jim Crow era.
Calvin Burnett was a graphic artist, illustrator, painter, designer, and art teacher from Cambridge, MA. Four Girls Dancing Together depicts two young girls and two adolescent girls dancing in one room. Their faces wear a sorrowful expression. Their nude, shadowy bodies stand together in pairs as they sway, caressing each other.
Mark Hewitt was an artist from Boston, MA. Fort Devens is a black-and-white drawing of three Black soldiers at a U.S. Army Reserves base in Massachusetts. In 1945, Fort Devens was a protest site for the treatment of the Black Women's Army Corps.
Anderson D. Macklin was an artist, professor, art historian, and author from Luther, OK. Flowers and Paper Magnified is an abstract view of its namesake. Macklin uses muted pastels and charcoal shadows to create a magnified perspective of the objects.
Hayward Oubre was a multimedia artist and educator from New Orleans, LA.. Flight Into Space is an abstracted perspective of a flight into space. Oubre uses shades of blue and black to display the complexities of space.
Irene V. Clark was a diasporic folklore artist from Washington, D.C. Five Centuries Ago depicts Black warriors preparing for battle. In the lead is a man on a horse holding a weapon with an animal by his side. He faces the warriors who follow him as they march under a dark blue sky.
The mural shows fishing life along the water. In the middle and on the right, a man is doubled over from his burden, while a group of fishermen brings their catch to shore. On the left, an elderly man and other figures suggest the trials and challenges of the ancestors.
Thomas Jefferson Flanagan was an artist and activist from Florence, GA. Fishing on the Quarters is a landscape painting with a large tree and a person fishing from a body of water. The tree and fisherman are in the foreground, while a wooden gate borders an acreage of colorful crops painted linearly.
Edward L. Pryce was a landscape architect and artist from Lake Charles, LA. Fisherman with Cormorant is a medium-sized carving of a man fishing with a bird on his head.
Green’s sculpture is a maquette for his terracotta, which depicts the head and upper fins of a fish. The fish is decorated with ornamental swirls, holes, and ridges. Professor Carroll Harris Simms required his students to add these additional embellishments to their sculptures.
This is an architectural rendering for the Fine Arts Building on Texas Southern’s campus. The building was dedicated as the John T. Biggers Art Center in 1995 to honor the art department’s founder. The building largely retains its original character as depicted in this image.
Gerald F. Hooper, Sr. was an artist from Tallahassee, FL. Figures is a study of 10 figures in movement. Hooper uses circles and quadrilaterals to frame the moving figures. The background is a collage of colorful wax strokes.
Hubbard, a student of Carroll Harris Simms, created “Figure With Turtle and Bird” in 1966. This terracotta depicts a bird, atop an abstract tree, surrounding a tortoise. These animals are often paired in folktales, including an Igbo tale where a tortoise fools birds and is punished by having his shell broken. The fable says this is the cause of the irregular shape of tortoise shells.
Mildred A Braxton was an artist from Newport News, VA. Figure #1 shows a human figure sitting in a chair facing away from the viewer. They are wearing blue clothing with pink clothing on top and blue shoes. A long pink and blue fabric piece hangs on the back of a brown chair.
“Fertility” shows an abstract female figure with breasts, an enlarged belly, and oversized hands. Like nearly all students of Professor Simms, Thomas covered his piece in various embellishments, particularly spirals. Oversized hands are also a characteristic of John Biggers’ artwork. The piece has discolored over the years since its creation.
John W. Rhoden was a renowned sculptor from Birmingham, AL. Female Figure is a wooden sculpture of a nude woman. The woman's demeanor is peaceful, and she stands slack-armed with a relieved expression.
Jewell Woodard Simon was an internationally acclaimed artist, teacher, and poet from Houston, TX. February Lace is an atmospheric watercolor of a park in late winter. The scene includes patches of dried and lush grass, trees with red and purple leaves, and a bridge. Simon used the trees in the foreground to create a sense of depth.
