An Interview with David C. Driskell
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David C. Driskell was born in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1931. In 1953, he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He received his Bachelor’s degree in art from Howard University in 1955 and a Master of Fine Arts from Catholic University of America in 1962. In 1964, he received a fellowship to study at The Netherlands Institute for the History of Art in The Hague. He has taught at a number of historically black colleges and universities, including Talladega College, Fisk University, and Howard University. In 1977, he accepted an appointment at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he taught for twenty-two years. He retired from the University of Maryland in 1998, and he is presently the Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus. In 2001, the University of Maryland established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora in his honor. His works are in major collections of art museums in the United States and throughout the world. He is the author of several books on African American art, including Two Centuries of Black American Art, William H. Johnson: An American Modern, and The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. Professor Driskell is one of the foremost authorities on African American art in the United States and in the world.
This interview was conducted on January 22, 2010, at the Mobile Museum of Art at the exhibition Successions: Prints by African American Artists from the Collection of Jean and Robert Steele.
It is rare to find a major artist who is also a major art collector. When did you begin to collect art?
I actually began to collect art when I was a student at Howard University. I won’t say all of our teachers were collectors, but certainly Professor James V. Herring, who founded the Howard University Department of Art in 1921, was a collector. His first art graduate was a woman named Alma Thomas, who graduated in 1924. Then Professor Herring later founded the Howard University Art Gallery and the Barnett-Aden Gallery. Professor James A. Porter, a student of Herring who later picked up the mantle from his professor, was certainly a collector. Their philosophy was: “Someday, you’re going to be a major artist, and you should start collecting. You buy other artists’ work and they will buy yours.” I bought a print from Professor James L. Wells when I was a student. I didn’t really see myself as a collector as a student, but I amassed quite a few things. Then we were told to collect books, and so I remember buying Lois Mailou Jones’s very first book [End Page 87] called Peintures 1937-1951, which was published in 1952. It cost thirty dollars, and that was a lot of money to put out at that time. But I bought it, and, of course, Professor Porter’s book Modern Negro Art, which was published in 1943. I would buy anything I could get my hands on that had any images of black artists in it.
When did you attend Howard University?
I went to Howard in 1949-1950 as a history major, and a year and a half later I just kind of decided that I wanted to have a minor in art. So I went over to the art department to take a course in art. I was in Professor Wells’s class one day, and Professor Porter came and looked over my shoulders at my drawings and said, “What is your name?” and I told him. He said, “You’re not in art?” and I said, “No.” He said, “What is your major?” and I said, “History.” He said, “Well, you don’t belong over there; you belong here.” So I went and changed my major. That’s really how I came into art.
I’ve read where you said that Professor Porter was your mentor.
Indeed. I took a course...
