His works were destroyed, against the wishes of the Texas black community, in 1937. I hope that you’re staying safe and productive during this time of social distancing. Most of you know that I am an artist from AshStudios.Org. The Office of Arts and Culture has allowed me to do a “residency” to raise awareness of the work of Aaron Douglas – who in 1936 was an important part of the now destroyed H
all of Negro Life, which was a Pavilion built for the Centennial Texas State Fair in 1936. African American Artist Aaron Douglas was from Kansas, moved to New York City and was a leader in the Harlem Renaissance, and was commissioned to paint murals for the Hall of Negro Life in Texas. Only two panels of the four murals survived – one in the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, and the other at the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. I was lucky enough to find out about his work through a visit to the Smithsonian Museum in D.C. As an artist that grew up in Dallas, I was shocked that a black historical art figure had created work for the North Texas community, and then further horrified that the powers-that-be in 1937 destroyed evidence of his legacy, while continuing to raise and maintain Confederate monuments. This residency begins to change the injustice of that act, and, as a form of cultural reparations, highlight the Aaron Douglas Legacy, the Hall of Negro Life, and Fair Park. Why is Aaron Douglas such an important artist to us? Aaron Douglas was generations ahead of his time in American Art. Douglas’s visions and working methods in visual art rivaled the developments in Modern Art that were happening in Paris and Berlin aka Picasso, Paul Klee, Kandinsky, Delaunay, etc.
