Aaron Douglas, 1899-1979
May 26, 1899 | Aaron Douglas is born in Topeka, Kansas |
Fall 1913– Spring 1917 |
Attends Topeka High School |
January 1918– Spring 1922 |
Enrolls in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and earns his B.F.A. |
Fall 1923– Spring 1925 |
Teaches art at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri |
Summer 1924 | Enrolls in the summer session at the University of Kansas |
Summer 1925 | Moves to Harlem in New York City; studies with German émigré artist Winold Reiss; begins contributing work to Opportunity, the magazine published by the National Urban League |
Fall 1925 | Takes a job in the mailroom of the NAACP's journal The Crisis at the invitation of W. E. B. Du Bois; contributes illustrations to Alain Locke's influential The New Negro: An Interpretation |
1926 | Creates covers for Opportunity and The Crisis; marries Alta Sawyer in June; co-founds the short-lived Fire!! A Quarterly Journal Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists |
1927 | Joins the staff of The Crisis as its art critic; illustrates James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse and designs dust jackets for the work of such authors as Arthur Huff Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen; paints a mural for Club Ebony in Harlem |
1928 | Receives a fellowship from the Barnes Foundation; serves as art editor for Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life |
1929 | Illustrates Paul Morand's Black Magic and André Salmon's The Black Venus; designs dust jackets for the work of WallaceThurman and Claude McKay |
1930 | As an artist in residence at Fisk University in Nashville, paints a cycle of murals for the Cravath Memorial Library; creates the photomural Birth o' the Blues for the College Inn Room of the Sherman Hotel in Chicago |
1931–1932 | Studies art at the Académie Scandinave in Paris; returns to New York in July 1932 and settles into the prosperous Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem |
1933 | First solo exhibition at Caz Delbo Gallery in New York in May; paints the mural Evolution of Negro Dance for the Harlem YMCA |
1934 | Participates in the annual traveling exhibition sponsored by the Harmon Foundation; commissioned by the PWAP (Public Works of Art Project) to paint a mural program entitled Aspects of Negro Life for the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library |
1935 | Becomes first president of the Harlem Artists Guild |
1936 | Participates in the first American Artists' Congress; paints a four-mural cycle for the Hall of Negro Life at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas; honored by a one-person exhibition at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln |
1937 | Receives a Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellowship to travel to historically-black colleges in the South |
1938 | Accepts a position as an assistant professor of art education at Fisk University in Nashville; receives a second Rosenwald fellowship to paint in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the Virgin Islands |
1941-44 | Enrolls in Teachers College at Columbia College in New York where he earns an M.A. in 1944 |
1951–1952 | Receives two Carnegie grants-in-aid through the Improvement of Teaching Project to paint on the East and West coasts |
1955 | Enrolls in a course on printmaking and enameling at the Brooklyn Museum Art School |
1956 | Travels to Europe and West Africa with wife Alta and friends Dr. W.W. and Grace Goens during the summer |
December 29, 1958 | Alta dies unexpectedly at the Wilmington, Delaware, home of the Goenses |
1963 | Visits the White House as a guest of President John F. Kennedy for centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation |
1965 | Restores his mural cycle at Fisk University during the summer |
1966 | Retires from Fisk University |
1969–1971 | Initiates a second campaign to restore his murals at Fisk University; travels back to Topeka, Kansas, for a retrospective exhibition held at the Mulvane Art Museum on the campus of Washburn University in the fall of 1970; is honored with a second retrospective in the spring of 1971 at Fisk University |
1972 | Fisk University designates a section of its new John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library the “Aaron Douglas Wing” |
1973 | Receives his honorary doctorate from Fisk in May |
1974 | Is featured in the filmstrip Profiles of Black Achievement |
1975 | Presents his papers to Fisk University's Franklin Library |
February 2, 1979 | Dies in Nashville |