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.
Michaux, a war veteran, was given the opportunity by Dr. Biggers to paint this mural during his first year as an art major. Reflecting on the devastation of the then-recent World War II, the mural depicts terror, hunger, and human compassion.
Lois Mailou Jones was an artist and art educator known for her costumes, textile designs, watercolors, paintings, and collages from Washington, D.C. Voodoo Worshippers, Haiti, is a watercolor scene of three Haitian Voodoo practitioners around four candles under a full moon. Jones places colorful shapes behind black brushstrokes that create depth.
Lois Mailou Jones was an artist and art educator from Washington, D.C., known for her costumes, textile designs, watercolors, paintings, and collages. Ville d'Houdain, France, is a landscape painting depicting a community in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region.
Hayward Oubre was a multimedia artist and educator from New Orleans, LA. Verily, I Say Unto You depicts a modern portrait of a Black Jesus. Jesus is drawn with an elongated nose with wide nostrils, large eyes, pursed lips, locs, and a raised finger.
Walter Augustus Simon was an art historian, professor, and artist best known for his abstract oil paintings from Petersburg, VA. Venezia is a cubist landscape abstraction depicting San Marco, Venice, ITL. Simon uses a variety of shapes and colors to illustrate Venice’s main public square.
William H. Johnson was a painter from Florence, SC. Untitled Folk Scene depicts a couple doing a wide variety of dances within the Southern Jazz tradition. In this iteration of the series, a dapper man dips an equally stylish woman as instruments play around them.
Skunder Boghossian was an artist from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Untitled depicts a spiritual scene of four masquerade figures hanging from a central pole. The four masquerades each wear different masks and wear beads, shells, and bands of color patterns.
Freddie Styles was an abstract painter and collage artist from Madison, Georgia. Untitled is an ink painting of three women with elongated necks, curled hair, and black-painted skin. Their faces are partially concealed as they stare straight ahead. Their torsos are white, with exposed breasts outlined in black ink.
Alexander S. McMath was a painter and educator from Clinton, SC. Untitled depicts a surrealist anatomical rendering of a human figure's side profile. Signed text by the artist sits on the right of the figure.
Vital's painting depicts a bird feeding a worm to its three offspring, reflecting the theme of the mother & child(ren) relationship that often appears in TSU student work. The artist often featured animals and nature in his work. After his graduation, Vital taught art for many years at Texas Southern.
This is a simple work of a richly colored woman featuring a geometric face with oval eyes, a triangle nose, and a prominent square mouth. The sculpture has African origins, yet the specific ethnic group is unknown because of the lack of body markings and hair adornments. The sculpture has a glossy finish.
William C. Henderson II was an artist from Pontiac, MI. Union is a geometric drawing that interrogrates the intersection of lines and shapes. The piece centers a split circle, one side consisting of lines, the other of shapes, with two intersecting squares overlayed over it.
Charles White was a painter, printmaker, muralist, and educator known for his stylistic approach to African American subjects from Chicago, IL Two Alone is a painting of a man embracing a woman as they stand in front of a window. The woman stands, arms crossed, leaning into the man who looks into the distance and above her head.
Dr. Eddie Jack Jordan, Sr. was a Southern artist from Wichita Falls, TX. Twin Fetish is a wooden sculpture of twins made from upcycled materials. This readymade art piece uses pieces of furniture to depict two twin siblings.
Edward L. Loper was an artist and teacher from Delaware known for his vibrant palette and juxtaposition of colors. Twelfth Street Gardens is a landscape piece illustrating a rural town under a slightly cloudy, blue sky during Autumn. The piece shows three men conversing beside a field in a rural residential area.
Obey’s print is a self-portrait. Under the direction of Dr. Biggers and Professor Simms, students would paint and draw self-portraits and sometimes sculpt self-portraits of their busts. This print depicts Obey in her bra; she also painted a self-portrait in a similar style. Biggers once referred to Obey as "one of our finest painters.”
This work by Earl Jones is an abstract, desert landscape of barren trees, emerging from red and orange rings in the ground. Jones was a student at Texas Southern in the mid-1970s and was taught by artists and instructors like Dr. John T. Biggers and Professor Carroll Harris Simms. Biggers frequently urged his students to draw inspiration from nature and their immediate surroundings.
Oliver's painting depicts an accord between settlers and a group of indigenous Americans. Colonizers consistently broke their agreements with tribes and took more and more land from them. Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest are frequent subjects of Oliver's work.
Samella Sanders Lewis was a printmaker, painter, sculptor, and art historian from New Orleans, LA. Trapper's Rest depicts a fishing pier at night. Two boats, fishing equipment, and a pier lodge, which fishermen often use for rest and storage, are positioned alongside the pier.
Leonard Henderson's cool-colored composition depicts a calm landscape of farmers working a field next to train tracks. The tracks running next to the field may hint at the contrast between urban and rural life, and show the development of rural areas during the turn of the 20th century.
Charles W. Stallings was a painter, printmaker, sculptor, and educator from Gary, IN. Tragic Figure is a sculpture of a gender-ambiguous person standing on a pedestal. The subject adopts a demure pose as it stares over its shoulders toward the viewer.
John Woodrow Wilson was a sculptor, painter, printmaker, and educator from Roxbury, MA. Trabajador is a black-and-white depiction of a Black bricklayer working at a construction site. The bricklayer is wearing a ten-gallon hat and overalls and holding bricks as he uses a trowel. There are steel beams in the background.
Charles White was a Black draftsman, printmaker, and painter who illustrated the Southern Black struggle. To the Future shows a Black woman standing cross-armed in front of hills and barren trees; she is scaled more significantly than the landscape. It speaks to African Americans being bigger than their past and a tradition of looking forward.
Norma Morgan was a painter from New Haven, Connecticut. Tired Traveler depicts a human figure tilting forward with their arms swinging outward. The figure is in the center of a dark landscape of an ocean shore.
William S. Carter was an abstract, landscape, still-life, and figurative painter from St. Louis, Missouri. Three Women (figures) depicts three nude women drawn over muted watercolors. The women maintain a confident pose that separates them from their abstract background.
Tinker's drawing appears to portray three generations of women, with a baby, her mother, and her grandmother. The mother holds her daughter and her bottle; the grandmother stands behind them with her hands crossed. Dr. Biggers’ artwork often centered women and their contributions to the family and society. He passed these themes along to his students, who, like Tinker, frequently highlight the relationship between mother and child.
Green's drawing depicts a central female figure, deep in thought, surrounded by faint, whispering figures. The scene is reminiscent of a queen's court, with the monarch encircled by attendants and advisors. Green taught painting and printmaking courses at Texas Southern until his retirement in 2024.
Davis's sculpture depicts a stylized version of the artist's head and neck, with a removable crown piece. The crown looks like a turtle with an insect atop it. The neck, crown, and forehead are all adorned with swirls, the most common motif in the terracottas of Simms' students.
Moore’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 Moore’s sculpture. Moore’s crown details include horns on both sides, green holes in the head, and a miniature mask in the center of the forehead. These busts are inspired by Nok terracotta sculptures and Ife busts, which Simms saw during his travels to Western Africa.
