Welcome to the 23rd James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art
Howard University April 20-21, 2012
Addressing the Role of Stewardship and Scholarship in Public and Private Collections of African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora
Reception
Thursday, April 19, 2012
5 p.m. – 7 p.m.
David Driskell Center
University of Maryland, College Park
This year’s opening event will be held in conjunction with the Eleventh Annual David C. Driskell Distinguished Lecture. The lecture will be given by Johnnetta B. Cole, Ph.D., director of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The public reception begins at 5 p.m. and the lecture will begin at 6 p.m. Reservations are required. Please RSVP by April 12. Call 301- 314-2615 or email driskellcenter@umd.edu. This event will be held at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland.
All other Porter Colloquium events will be held on the historic campus of Howard University.
11th Annual David C. Driskell Distinguished Lecture
Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole
Director, Smithsonian National Museum
of African Art
Before assuming her current position, Johnnetta Cole had a long and distinguished career as an educator and humanitarian. Through her work as a college president, university professor and through her published works, speeches and community service she has consistently addressed the issues most important to her; creating racial and gender parity and redressing all other forms of inequality.
Dr. Cole served as president of Spelman College and Bennett College for Women. She is the only person to have served as president of these two historically Black colleges for women in the United States. She is also Professor Emerita of Emory University from which she retired as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women's Studies and African American Studies.
After beginning her college studies at Fisk University and completing her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College, Johnnetta Cole earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University. Dr. Cole made history in 1987 when she became the first African American woman to serve as president of Spelman College. At her inauguration, Drs. Bill and Camille Cosby donated $20 million dollars to the college; and during her presidency, Spelman was named the number one liberal arts college of the South. During her presidency at Bennett College for Women, an art gallery was opened and programs were initiated in women's studies and global studies.
Dr. Cole has conducted research in Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, and she has authored and edited several books and scores of scholarly articles. She is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a member of the American Association of Museum Directors.
Johnnetta Cole has been awarded 55 honorary degrees and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the TransAfrica Forum Global Public Service Award, the Radcliffe Medal, the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal, the 2001 Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Community Service from United Way of America, The Joseph Prize for Human Rights presented by the Anti-Defamation League, The Uncommon Height Award from the National Council of Negro Women, The John W. Gardner leadership Award from The Independent Sector, the Lenore and George W. Romney Citizen Volunteer Award from the Points of Light Foundation, Ebony magazines most influential 100 in 2010, George Washington Carver award 2011, Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award and Washingtonian Magazine's 100 most powerful women 2011.
From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Cole was the Chair of the Board of United Way of America; the first African American to serve in that position. She has served on both corporate and not-for-profit boards, including Home Depot, Merck, and Nation's Bank South and TransAfrica Forum. She was the first woman to serve on the board of Coca-Cola Enterprises.
Dr. Cole currently chairs the board of the National Visionary Leadership Project and she is on the board of KaBOOM DC. She is founding chair of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute, and is on the Advisory Committee of America's Promise and the Points of Light Foundation. Dr. Cole is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the Links, Inc. and the National Council of Negro Women.
Dr. Cole is married to James D. Staton Jr. She is the mother of three sons and one step-son, and she has three grand children. Dr. Cole is also a mentor to many young women and men.
Friday, April 20, 2012
10:00 am
School of Business Auditorium, Howard University
Opening Greetings
John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., Ed.D
Executive Director,
White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
On July 20, 2009, John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). To accomplish the initiative’s mission of strengthening the capacity of 105 HBCUs, he leads his team to work with the White House, 32 federal agencies, and the private corporate and philanthropic sectors. Their challenge is to ensure that HBCUs are a significant force in helping the nation to reach the goal set by President Obama of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020.
Before working with the White House Initiative, Wilson was an associate professor of higher education in the Graduate School of Education at the George Washington University (GWU). He also served as the executive dean of GWU’s Virginia campus, and he helped to develop a strategic plan for the university. While at GWU, his primary research and teaching interests included transformative advancement and finance in higher education, the role of black colleges and universities, and identifying the most sensible paths aspiring institutions can take toward greater stability and prestig
Wilson spent the first 16 years of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he ultimately served as director of foundation relations and assistant provost. He was a senior officer by the second of two capital campaigns, with goals of $700 million and $2 billion, respectively. As director, he more than doubled the productivity of the office he managed and reached a record annual revenue stream of over $50 million.
Wilson received a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University, and both a master’s and a doctoral degree in administration, planning and social policy, also from Harvard University. While working at MIT, he served as a teaching fellow in Harvard University’s Afro-American Studies Department as well as in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
For 10 years, Wilson served as the president of the Greater Boston Morehouse College Alumni Association. In that role, he led an effort to raise over $.5 million toward scholarships and another $.5 million toward community outreach for his alumni chapter. Based in no small part on those achievements, he was awarded the coveted Benjamin Elijah Mays Leadership Award by his alma mater in 1998.
Wilson has recently served on the Board of Trustees of Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga.; as a consultant in the United Negro College Fund Institute for Capacity Building's HBCU Institutional Advancement Program; and on the Kresge Foundation’s Black College Advisory Board. From 1996 through 2000, he served as chairman of the Alumni Council of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has served on the boards of both the Samaritans and the Andover Newton Theological School.
He is married to Dr. Carol Espy-Wilson, an Engineering Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. John and Carol have twin, twenty-two-year old daughters, Ayana and Ashia, and a sixteen-year-old son, John Silvanus Wilson III (“Jay”).
10:15 am
Opening Lecture
Friday, April 20, 2012
Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee
Director, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art
In 1999 she organized and was the principal author of The Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art. Her critical writings have appeared in numerous journals including the International Review of African American Art, African Arts, and NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art. She is the recipient of numerous academic and scholarly awards including a MacArthur Curatorial Fellowship in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago (1998-2000). She was recently selected to participate in the 2003 class of the Museum Management Institute at the Getty Leadership Institute. Barnwell, an alumna of Spelman College, completed her Masters and Doctorate degrees in art history from Duke University. Her monograph, Charles White, The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Volume I, was published by Pomegranate Communications in 2002. Barnwell currently serves on the board of the Metropolitan Atlanta Art Fund.
Keynote Address
1:40 p.m.
Sanford Biggers
Performance and installation artist
Reception
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
42nd Annual Faculty Exhibition
Howard University Art Gallery
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Welcome
10:00 a.m.
Howard University School of Business Auditorium
Keynote Address
Saturday, April 21, 2012
1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Dr. Kellie Jones
Associate Professor, Columbia University
Dr. Kellie Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latino/a and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. Her teaching covers the 17th–21st centuries.
Dr. Jones was named an Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellow in 2008 for her lifetime of writing on visual art. The fellowship commemorates the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954 which struck down legal segregation; it recognizes candidates whose work honors and furthers the spirit of the statute. In 2005 she was the inaugural recipient of the David C. Driskell Award in African American Art and Art History from the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and a Scholar-in-Residence, at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.
Her writings have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and the journals NKA, Artforum, Flash Art, Atlantica, and Third Text among others. Her book EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (Duke University Press 2011) has been named one of the top art books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. Her project Taming the Freeway and Other Acts of Urban HIP-notism: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s is forthcoming from The MIT Press.
Dr. Jones is the curator of "Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980," which will open at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in October 2011. The show is part of the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time initiative—a region-wide project documenting Southern California's contributions to artistic movements in the postwar period.
Howard University Gallery of Art
Benefit Awards Gala
Saturday April, 21, 2012
Reception
6:30 p.m.
Dinner and Awards Program
6:30 – 10:00 p.m.
Honoring:
Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole
Dr. Robert E. Steele
Dr. Richard J. Powell
Howard University Gallery of Art
$150 individual ticket
$130 if purchased before April 9, 2012
