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Decolonize Black History Month

Samella Lewis

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8. Image and belief : Samella Lewis Artist and art historian Samella Lewis, née Sanders, is renowned for her contributions to African American art and art history. In 1951, Lewis became the first African American woman to receive a doctorate in fine arts and history. From 1969 to 1984, she was a professor of art history at Scripps College in Claremont, California, becoming the college's first tenured African American professor. She helped found the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles in 1976, and established the influential journal International Review of African-American Art

Day 10: Samella Lewis Artist and art historian Samella Lewis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 27, 1924. She briefly attended Dillard University before transferring to Hampton, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in art history in 1945. Lewis continued to study art history and received both a master’s degree (1948) and a doctorate (1951) in the subject from Ohio State University. She was the first Black woman to get an Art History Phd.
While working as a professor of art history at Scripps College, Lewis wrote multiple books on Black art. She founded an art book publishing house called Contemporary Crafts in 1969, through which her first book Black Artists on Art was published. Black Artists on Art Volume 2 was published in 1971. Lewis’ grandson is currently working on volumes 3 and 4. Her textbook African American Art and Artists (1978), is still in print. In addition to art historical surveys, Lewis wrote monographs of artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthé and Elizabeth Catlett. She advised the production of the journal Black Art: An International Quarterly (later the International Review of African-American Art).
Lewis has received numerous rewards for her work such as a Fullbright scholarship to conduct research in China. She was interviewed by the Oral Documentation Project at The Getty Research Institute. Both a scholarship and contemporary art collection at Scripps are named in her honor.