Alvia Wardlaw – Wikipedia

American art scholar

Alvia J. Wardlaw (born November 5, 1947) is an American art scholar, and one of the country’s top experts on African-American art.^[1] She is Curator and Director of the University Museum at Texas Southern University, an institution central to the development of art by African Americans in Houston. She also is a professor of Art History at Texas Southern University. Wardlaw is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Council of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and co-founded the National Alliance of African and African American Art Support groups in 1998.^[2] Wardlaw was University of Texas at Austin’s first African-American PhD in Art History.^[3]

From 1995 to 2009, Wardlaw was Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she organized more than 75 exhibitions on African and African-American art.^[4] She was adjunct curator of African-American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1994. Her exhibition The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, a collection of quilts by outstanding quilters from Alabama, broke attendance records at major museums across the 11 cities to which it traveled^[2] and was one of the most talked-about museum shows of 2002 in America and beyond. She has presented exhibitions that added to the American art canon the work of major, previously undercelebrated African-American artists, in particular John Biggers, Thornton Dial and Kermit Oliver.^[5] Her own photographs were also shown across Texas. She grew up and lives in Third Ward, Houston, Texas.

Education[edit]

Wardlaw received a B.A. degree in Art History from Wellesley College in 1969.^[6] In 1986 she earned an M.A. degree in Art History from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.^[6] In 1996 she received a Ph.D. degree in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin.^[6]

Exhibitions curated[edit]

• 2006: Thorton Dial in the 21st Century; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, exhibit and catalogue^[7]
• 2002–2006: The Quilts of Gees Bend – 11 cities
• Our New Day Begun: African American Artists Entering the Millennium, exhibition catalogue, LBJ Library and Museum
• Roy DeCarava: Photographs, exhibition and exhibition catalogue, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• Ceremonies and Visions: The Art of John Biggers
• Homecoming. African American Family History in Georgia
• John Biggers: Bridges
• 1995: John Biggers: View from the Upper Room, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• 2005: Notes from a Child’s Odyssey: The Art of Kermit Oliver, Museum of Fine Arts Houston
• 2008: Houston Collects: African American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Wardlaw has historicized John Biggers’ art philosophy, based in large part on his travels to Africa and his celebration of the African-American community, his legacy and impact on student artists who studied with him, and his impact upon the modern art world.^[8] She has mentored countless students of color to pursue careers in the museum field, ranging from curatorial to conservation positions.

Writing[edit]

• Dominique de Menil asked her to write an essay for the groundbreaking exhibition The De Luxe Show, August 22, 1971, pairing the works of notable white and black artists.
• The exhibition Handcrafted, an early show at the Studio Museum [in Harlem, 1972].
• The Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room (with essays by Edmund Barry Gaither, Alison de Lima Greene, and Robert Farris Thompson), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), 1995.
• (Editor) Grant Hill, Something All Our Own: The Grant Hill Collection of African American Art, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2004.
• Notes from a Child’s Odyssey: The Art of Kermit Oliver, Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), 2005.
• Charles Alston, Pomegranate (Petaluma, CA), 2007.
• Also author of Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art, as an accompaniment to the exhibition. Contributor of articles and poetry to various publications, including The Black Scholar.^[9]
• Collecting African American Art: the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2009.^[10]

• Fulbright Fellowship in West Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal in 1984
• Fulbright Award for study in Tanzania, East Africa in 1997^[11]
• Senior Fellow for the 2001 American Leadership Forum
• Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994
• Award of Merit from the University of Texas at Austin
• Ethos Founders Award from Wellesley College
• African American Living Legend by African-American News and Issues
• Texas Southern University’s Research Scholar of the Year in 2009.
• In addition, Black Art Ancestral Legacy was named Best Exhibition of 1990 by D Magazine, and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend received the International Association of Art Critics Award in 2003.

References[edit]