New Acquisitions in the Schomburg’s Art and Artifacts Division

By Candice Frederick
January 22, 2016
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Tammi Lawson, Assistant Curator of our Art and Artifacts Divisions shares some of the Schomburg's newest gems:

Our Art and Artifacts Division may be temporarily closed due to renovations, but our collection continues to grow! Dr. Constance Clayton of Philadelphia recently donated a collection of twenty-nine works of art by prominent African-American artist to the division.

The impressive collection includes works by one of the most successful artists of the nineteenth century, landscape painter Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901); a suite of photographs by Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van der Zee (1886-1983); silkscreen prints by Romare Bearden (1911-1988); and Carborundum Mezzotints by Dox Thrash (1893-1965), an artist mostly associated with the Works Progress Administration period who invented the carborundum technique. 

Dr. Clayton’s gift also presented the Schomburg with a new artist to our collection, Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948). Waring is associated with the Harlem Renaissance and was also an art educator who taught for several decades at Cheney State University.