The 2014 Callaloo Art Award

Near the completion of the inaugural issue of Callaloo • Art, I began to think about Samella Lewis—herself a founding editor and visual artist—and the invaluable pioneering roles she played in the development, promotion, preservation, and study of African American visual art and of her reading and documentation of its history. I could not, and can never, forget her indefatigable and selfless efforts to help make visible to the world African American visual art productions. And with deep convictions to bring positive change to her native land, the USA, she worked ceaselessly during an era when white racist ideologies and practices, sanctioned by the state, attempted to arrest en masse the aesthetic genius of African Americans. To combat white racist ideologies and practices, Samella Lewis worked quietly and tirelessly to make visible to all Americans the creative productions of African American visual artists, and she did so by creating venues through which their productions would be exhibited and viewed by large audiences—necessary, noble, and heroic efforts indeed. Her words, direct and sincere, about her long career continue to tug at my mind and imagination, as they did when I first encountered them: “My inspiration as an artist and art historian,” she says, “comes from the need to bring greater attention to the accomplishments of African American artists.” What better way to begin Callaloo • Art as an annual publication devoted to African Diaspora visual art than to acknowledge the US American who founded and edited the first academic journal devoted to African American visual art: to inaugurate the Callaloo Art Award and through it honor Dr. Samella Lewis, who devoted the main of her life and career supporting and documenting the achievements of her fellow visual artists. That Samella Lewis came to mind as a candidate for and then as the first recipient of the Callaloo Art Award should not surprise anyone who is knowledgeable of the earliest pioneering work on African American visual art and its creators. It is obvious that—what for the invaluable work she has done for American art—Dr. Lewis occupies an enviable position among her fellow pioneers. Like W. E. B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Booker T. Washington, Samella Lewis is indeed “a race man.”

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1924, Samella Lewis, editor and educator, has spent the main of her life making visible and documenting the accomplishments of African American visual artists by founding and managing venues that support American artists and their work. She founded and edited the journal Black Art: An International Quarterly, which, in 1978, became International Review of African-American Art (IRAAA); and, in 1969 and 1971, she oversaw the publication of a two-volume anthology, Black Artists on Art. She used her own personal finances in order to create Contemporary Crafts, the publishing house that brought out the two anthologies. African-American Art and Artists (1978), Art: African American (1978), Caribbean Visions: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture (1995), The Art of Elizabeth Catlett (2000), and Barthé: His Life in Art (2009)—these are some of the books she authored that new generations continue to value for the study of African Diaspora art. In addition to writing a number of books during her distinguished career, she created the Ashanti Gallery in Pomona, CA, in 1981, and, in 1976, founded the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles, as well as curated a number of exhibitions featuring the work of African American artists whose work continued to be summarily denigrated or ignored by the white racists who controlled public and private museums, galleries, and other visual arts venues. What made necessary Samella Lewis’s various efforts in support and promotion of African American artists and their work is that for the first time most of them found in her and her determined and selfless work a very strong ally that, even to this very day, helped them to move forward in their need for support to produce and exhibit their art.

Samella Lewis’s engagements with visual art did not begin...