David Driskell
Driskell received his BA in Fine Art from Howard University (1955) and MFA from Catholic University (1962), both in Washington, D.C. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1953, after which he maintained a lifelong relationship, serving as visiting faculty, lecturer, and board member. In 1976, Driskell curated the groundbreaking exhibition, Two Centuries of Black American Art, which opened in 1976 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and traveled to museums throughout the US. The catalogue Driskell penned in support of the exhibition was seminal to the canon.
David Driskell taught at Talladega College, Howard University, and Fisk University before accepting a position in the Art Department at the University of Maryland, where he remained until he retired in1998. In 2001, the University of Maryland opened The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora to honor his legacy and continue his mission.
Driskell has received many accolades and honorary doctorates over the course of his career, in addition to being the recipient of several of the highest and most prestigious honors awarded in his field: in 2000, President Bill Clinton bestowed him with the National Humanities Medal; in 2005, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta established the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award honoring contributions to the canon of African American art by a scholar or artist, in his honor; in 2018 Driskell was named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Driskell’s works have been included in a great number of solo and group exhibitions in galleries and institutions across the US, the most recent of which was the first retrospective of his work David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History (2021-2022), which was exhibited the High Museum of Art, GA before traveling to the Portland Museum of Art, ME, the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and the Cincinnati Art Museum, OH. Other solo exhibitions include David Driskell: Renewal and Reform (2017) at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, ME, and Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell (2011) at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Group exhibitions include, Black American Portraits (2021-2022) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Afro-Atlantic Stories (2018), which began at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art and traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, and the Dallas Museum of Art, TX (2021-2024); Tell Me Your Story (2020) at Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, the Netherlands; and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2018-2019) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY.
David Driskell's works are represented in collections throughout the country, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Bowdoin College Museum, ME; Colby College Museum, ME; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR; High Museum of Art, GA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA; Portland Museum of Art, ME; TheStudio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, VA, among others.
