Focus on African American Art

The Amistad Research Center is co-sponsoring a lecture today (May 20) by a renowned curator and art historian of African American art in conjunction with a major exhibit of works from the center's collection now on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Daniel Schulman will give the free lecture at 6:30 p.m. at Longue Vue House and Gardens, 7 Bamboo Road in New Orleans. The presentation, "Anyplace But Here: African American Art and Rosenwald Fellows' Travel," will be followed by a reception.

Schulman's lecture builds upon the NOMA exhibition, "Beyond the Blues: Reflections of African America in the Fine Arts Collection of the Amistad Research Center," which continues through July 11.

Schulman will explore the artistic legacy of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Created by Chicago businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the Fund's Fellowship Program awarded stipends between 1928 and 1948 to hundreds of African American artists, writers, teachers and scholars, as well as white Southerners interested in race relations. Rosenwald's daughter and son-in-law, Edith and Edgar Stern, are the founders of Longue Vue, which is hosting today's talk.

In conjunction with the lecture, Longue Vue will display serigraphs from Jacob Lawrence's Toussaint L'Ouverture Series. Lawrence received three consecutive Rosenwald fellowships from 1940 to 1943.

Based at Tulane, the Amistad Research Center is the nation's oldest, largest and most comprehensive independent archive specializing in the history of African Americans and other ethnic minorities.