Celebrating the Legacy of the Iconic Samella Lewis, aka Godmother of Black Art

How one woman integrated Black artists into the American canon for decades.

Like James Brown was the “Godfather of Soul”, Aretha Franklin, “Godmother of Soul”, and Samella Lewis was the “Godmother” of Black Art. Ms. Lewis was an educator, professor, activist, historian, author, curator, professor, gallerist, collector, mentor, and artist who wrote influential books and curated shows sharing art as she changed the landscape of African American art history for almost eight decades by documenting, and elevating Black artists.

Her love for Black art afforded her to serve as the curatorial fellow on the 2011 Hammer Museum exhibition “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–80. Ms. Lewis’s reputation always preceded her. Many have referred to her as a “Renaissance Woman” because of her scope and knowledge afforded her espousing in various subjects which made admirers and colleagues take note of her genius.

Ms. Lewis published books on Black artists and was the force behind “Art: African American” and its revision “African American Art and Artists”, a key text on the history of Black art in the United States.

In the early 1970s, Lewis operated the L.A. art spaces Multi-Cul and the Gallery, a platform for notable Los Angeles Artists during a time when visibility was limited for black artists aka Black Arts Movement. She went on during this time to be the founder of the Museum of African American Arts now located in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw district. Her Museum embraced notable such as Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthe, and Faith Ringgold.

As the Godmother of Black Art versed in Caribbean art and spoke Chinese added to her versatility. Other talents included paintings, lithographs, linocuts, and serigraphs, while her first love was centered around the Black art figure. Her intent was to present the past, present, and guide into the future the Black art experience.

Lewis wore many labels outside of Godmother of Black art and Renaissance women aka “a giant”, “a life force in artistic vision,” and “a soft-spoken powerhouse”. These are just a few of her well-earned titles.

Ms. Lewis is a native of New Orleans born on February 27, 1923, and transitioned on May 27, 2022. She was born into humble beginnings as her father was a farmer and her mother a domestic but she rose far above the expectations of that time.

As a young girl, she had a love for art from four years old and started drawing. As she got older she spent many hours hanging in the city’s French Quarter, observing artists’ work. While there she met her soon-to-be mentor, Alfredo Gali, an Italian portrait, who gave her lessons. She was the epitome of hard work.

To further her art education, she enrolled at Dillard University, an HBCU, which afforded her to meet Elizabeth Catlett, who became a lifelong mentor, colleague, and close friend. Even after her lifelong mentor married and moved to Hampton Institute in Virginia, aka Hampton University, she followed her and obtained her undergraduate degree at Hampton in 1945.

After graduation, she taught at Hampton and befriended Viktor Lowenfeld, an education theorist and Jewish refugee from Austria who had fled the Nazis and was influential in her art journey and recommended her to pursue studies at Ohio State University. Continuing her art journey, she traveled internationally and returned to make Los Angeles home.

Also notable was from Ohio State, she obtained a master’s degree and a double doctorate in fine arts and art history and met two influential classmates during her studies, Roy Lichtenstein, a future Pop maestro, and Paul Gad Lewis, a mathematician, whom she married in 1948 until his death in 2013.

As a professor, Lewis taught at Morgan College in Baltimore aka Morgan State University, and Florida A&M University in Tallahassee where she was an activist with the NAACP thereby becoming a target of the Ku Klux Klan as they shot out the windows of her home.

Plattsburgh, New York became their place of refugee and she acquired a teaching job at SUNNY Plattsburgh and founded an NAACP chapter. Her location changed but not her activism.

She also taught at Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Dominguez Hills, and Scripps College in Claremont, the first Black tenured professor, who was instrumental in expanding their art history and taught courses in African Art and Chinese art. Other credits included being a curator of the school’s Clark Humanities Museums which was frequented by the likes of Maya Angelou, and Nikki Giovanni.

In Ms. Lewis’s honor, Scripp’s Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery established the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection which featured many artists’ works alongside her art donated and exclusive artwork contributions.

Her passion for Black art’s true representation led to a disagreement and departure with the education department at the Los Angeles County Museum as they overlook work by Black artists. She even picketed them with a group, Concerned Citizens for Black Art, that she helped form.

Her rooster of work was later exhibited at the Hammer Museum, the Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood, and LACMA. Also, she was the recipient of numerous honorary awards and a Distinguished Artist Ward for Lifetime Achievement from the College Art Association.

In conclusion, Ms. Lewis had an insatiable appetite, love, and respect for Black Art and seized every opportunity to display it in as many venues that presented the possibility for her work and other Black artists’ work to be displayed. She lived a life of art activism and now the torch is passed on to the many who follow in her footsteps as she oversees them from the heavens. R.I.P.

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