January 30, 1998 Contact: Adrienne Outlaw (615) 322-2706 a.outlaw @Vanderbilt.edu

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Vanderbilt lecturer talks about the father

of African-American art

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Amy Kirschke, a senior lecturer in the Fine Arts Department at Vanderbilt University is delivering a paper on African art, entitled "Oh, Africa! African Art in the Harlem Renaissance," at the Centre d'etudes Afro-Americaines in Paris, Jan. 29-31. Participants of the conference, held by the Universite Denis Diderot at the Sorbonne, are discussing the construction and reconstruction of African-American Identity.

"The conference is significant because it shows that African-American studies are important not just in the United States," said Kirschke, who is one of two art historians invited to the inter-disciplinary conference primarily attended by history and literature scholars from around the world.

Author of "Aaron Douglas: Art, Race and the Harlem Renaissance," the first biography on Douglas, Kirshcke discusses how the leader of the 1920s and 1930s cultural movement called the Harlem Renaissance worked to introduce African history to the black middle class through art.

Rather than going to Paris like many of his contemporaries did to seek racial freedom and to study with European artists, Douglas moved to Nashville in the 1930s to paint a mural series for Fisk University, where he later chaired the art department until his retirement in 1966. Today his work can be found in collections in Nashville, New York and Washington, D.C.

-VU-

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