Black History Month Calendar - Profiles of Black Influence in Arts and Architecture
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Feb 1: Charles Dumas, associate professor of theatre, actor
Charles Dumas, an associate professor in the School of Theatre, is co-founder of the State College Shakespeare Festival and artistic director of the Loaves and Fish Traveling Repertory Company. He teaches acting and African-American drama, conducts diverse culture workshops and directs, with his most recent productions at Penn State being A Colored Museum and Fences. Dumas was recently a Fulbright Fellow to South Africa, where he directed and researched African drama, one of his areas of study. He is also a professional director, writer and actor, appearing on such TV shows as Ed, Law and Order, All My Children, 100 Centre Street and the Emmy Award-winning Separate But Equal. His recent films include Red Water, Diehard with a Vengeance, Copland, Deep Impact, and Peacemaker. He has performed at many of the regional theatres in the United States and in New York, on Broadway and off-Broadway. Internationally he has performed in South Africa, Scotland, England, The Netherlands, Hong Kong, Brazil and Haiti. Dumas is presently finishing a two-year contract as director of the Acting in Media program at Temple University.
Feb 4: Carla Hargrove, actress
Penn State alumna Carla J. Hargrove (’97 M.F.A. Theatre) is living out the dream of many aspiring actresses. Since 2004, she has been performing on Broadway in the hit production of Hairspray. Prior to her role as one of Hairspray’s Dynamites, she played street urchin Ronnette in the Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors. While a student at Penn State, Hargrove appeared in a production of Raisin in the Sun with the late Frances Foster, an Obie-winning actress who appeared in dozens of films and plays and was a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company. Following her graduation from Penn State, Hargrove moved to New York and made her New York debut in My Brother's Keeper, an off-Broadway show written and directed by Charles Dumas. She then toured with playwright Oliver Goldstick's Dinah Was, a musical about blues singer Dinah Washington. She played multiple roles as Washington's mother, personal assistant, and a kitchen maid.
Hargrove was recognized with the John Barrymore Award for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Musical (2000), and the Black Theatre Alliance Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical (2000), both for her role in Dinah Was. She has also performed with cabaret group LaBro and New York's Broadway Inspirational Voices, a choir comprised of dozens of Broadway vocalists.
Feb 5: Ruby Dee, actress, activist
Ruby Dee (nee Ruby Ann Wallace), civil rights leader, actress and author, has made her mark in African American culture through her acting career and real-life role as an equal rights activist. Born on October 27, 1924, Dee graduated from Hunter College and began her illustrious career in the 1940s with the American Negro Theater. In 1948, she played a feature role in Anna Lucasta, where she was paired with actor and writer Ossie Davis. She would soon marry Davis, and eventually star in several of his productions. Her superior stage presence led to her renowned performances in the films No Way Out and A Raisin in the Sun. Her stage credits include The Balcony, Boesman and Lena, A Raisin in the Sun, South Pacific, and One Nerve, her one-woman show chronicling her own stories. Dee has always been involved and influential in the African American struggle in the arts. She also opened many doors for blacks in theatre when she became the first African American to play major roles in the American Shakespeare Festival in Stanford, Conn. Friend of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and proud member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Dee has been inducted into both the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and the Theater Hall of Fame.
Feb 6: Norma Sklarek, first black female architect
Architectural pioneer Norma Sklarek was born in 1928 in Harlem, N.Y. Her father encouraged her to pursue architecture as a career. She received her degree in 1950 from Columbia University School of Architecture, and passed the licensing exam in 1954 on the first try, garnishing high praises from her former dean. The hardest part of her college program was being the youngest and only woman of color in the program. Sklarek’s first job was in the Department of Public Works in New York. She landed her first private sector job at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the largest firms in the United States at that time, and later moved to Los Angeles and became the first black female (and female director) in the firm of Gruen and Associates. In 1985, Sklarek became a principal in Siegel-Sklarek-Diamond, which is one of the largest all-female-owned firms in the country. In 1980, Sklarek became the first black woman to be honored with a Fellowship by the American Institute of Architects.
Her credits include the American Embassy in Japan, the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City, San Bernardino City Hall, and the California Mart, which has the distinction of being the largest fashion center in the world.
Feb 7: Steve Cromity, architect, member of A&A alumni society board of directors
Penn State alumnus Steve Cromity (’90 B.Arch.), a member of the Arts and Architecture/ Performing Arts Alumni Society Board of Directors, is very active in mentoring architecture students at Penn State, as well as potential architecture students in the Philadelphia area. He earned a Master’s of Public Administration in 1993 at Villanova University and began his career at The Community Action Agency in Philadelphia as a housing specialist. He then moved to RHM Associates and Ewing Cole Architects and is currently a project manager at KBCA Architects. Cromity is a past president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects. He cites black architects Julian Francis Abele and Vertner Woodson Tangy as his inspiration.
Feb 8: John Anderson-Lankford, 1st black registered architect
John Anderson Lankford (1894-1946), attorney, blacksmith, real estate broker, professor and author, has the distinction of being the first African American architect in the United States with an established architectural office, which was housed in Washington, D.C.
He was educated at Lincoln Institute (now University) and Tuskegee Institute (based on an invite from Booker T. Washington himself) and received his B.S. in 1898 from Shaw University. Anderson-Lankford began his career in Washington in 1902, working on the new hall for the Grand United Order of True Reformers. It was a stately five-story building that held the distinction of being the first structure in Washington, D.C. solely funded by African Americans. The building also served as home to Washington’s first Black National Guard unit and the dance hall has the distinction of being the first place Duke Ellington performed. Located at 1200 U Street, it is still used as an office building and the home to the Public Welfare Commission. Anderson-Lankford was credited with the establishment of the architecture school at Howard University and was also known for designing many churches, still standing today, in the United States and as far away as Capetown, South Africa.
Feb 11:Velvet Brown, associate professor of music, tuba
Velvet Brown, associate professor of tuba and euphonium in the School of Music, is recognized as the leading tuba instructor in the country. Prior to her appointment in 2003 at Penn State, she taught at Bowling Green State University and Ball State University, and served as an associate director of University Bands at Boston University. She received the 1999-2000 William Fulbright Fellowship Vinciguerra Award. Brown has had many successful students who have been prize winners at various regional, national, and international competitions.
Brown enjoys a professional career as an international soloist and chamber ensemble performer, recording artist, conductor, and orchestral player, regularly performing throughout the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, and Canada. She has served as principal tubist with the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra and as substitute or additional tubist with the Detroit Symphony, Saint Louis Symphony, San Francisco Women's Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. She has garnered high praise as a member of the Monarch Brass Quintet and Brass Ensemble, the Junction Tuba Quartet, and the Garda Duo. Currently, she serves as secretary of the executive committee for the International Tuba and Euphonium Association (ITEA), and is a board member of the International Women's Brass Conference. Brown has released two solo CDs: Velvet and Music for Velvet (Crystal Records). In addition, she has recorded music by the award-winning composer Neal Corwell for the Nicolai Music Label. Her interpretation of John William's Tuba Concerto can be heard on the Bowling Green Philharmonia's Composer's Voice -- Volume IV recording, which is forthcoming.
Feb 12: Langston Fitzgerald III, professor of music, trumpet
Langston Fitzgerald III, professor of trumpet in the School of Music, currently teaches at both the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Penn State. Prior to joining the Penn State faculty, Fitzgerald taught trumpet at Catholic University, Morgan State University, the Duke Ellington High School for the Performing Arts, University of Maryland at Baltimore County, University of the District of Columbia, Towson State University, and Western Maryland College. He was lecturer at the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland at College Park, and served as assistant professor of trumpet, coordinator of the brass department, and orchestra conductor at Howard University.
Fitzgerald is principal trumpet and musical contractor of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society Orchestra, and first trumpet and founder of both the Giavanni and the Potomac brass quintets. He played trumpet with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 2003, as well as an extra with the National Symphony and performed as assistant principal trumpet with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. His free-lancing in Baltimore and Washington has included performing at three presidential inaugurations and three "Christmas in Washington" nationally televised specials. He helped to contract and played co-principal trumpet at the nationally televised millennium celebration at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Fitzgerald is a member of the International Trumpet Guild and serves on the board of the International Women's Brass Conference. Fitzgerald is also a member of the American Federation of Musicians in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
Feb 13: Wynton Marsalis, musician (trumpet), activist, educator
Wynton Marsalis, described as the most outstanding jazz musician and trumpeter of his generation, became the first jazz musician to win the Nobel Prize in 1997. He is considered one of the world’s top classical trumpeters, a big band leader in the tradition of Duke Ellington, a brilliant composer, a devoted advocate for the arts and a tireless and inspiring educator. His life is a portrait of discipline, dedication, sacrifice, and creative accomplishment in support of education and the non-profit sector.
Born in New Orleans, Marsalis was one of six children and exhibited early signs for musical aptitude. He performed at age eight with legendary banjoist Danny Barker, and at age 14 performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. He was also the youngest person, at 17, to ever be accepted at the Tanglewood Berkshire Music Center and awarded the school’s prestigious Harvey Shapiro Award. Marsalis has made 11 classical albums and 33 jazz albums to date. He has won nine Grammy Awards and the only artist to win for both classical and jazz music.
Feb 14: Caru Bowns, assistant professor of landscape architecture
Caru Bowns, assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, has a career that has included frequent cross-overs between the professional world and academia. Early in her career, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil, working with communities to improve social networks and to create community infrastructure. Her education, professional and academic experiences support a fundamental belief in the value of sustaining community. They also affirm an on-going commitment to further her own and others understanding and involvement in the collective human experience. Bowns is inspired by the early community organizing efforts of Saul Alinsky and Karl Linn in American communities, and the Brazil educator, Paulo Freire's ethics for individual and collective empowerment.
Bowns holds two master’s degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in landscape architecture and city and regional planning, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California at Davis. Her education in landscape architecture led to professional experience in corporate architecture and engineering firms and work as a planner with the municipal government in Kuwait City (before the first Iraqi invasion). She then became the project manager for an extensive 3-year, public process project with the UC Davis Medical Center to build community capacity with the neighboring urban community. Since joining the Department of Landscape Architecture at Penn State in 2003, she has returned to her early engagement with Brazilian communities and is funded by the College of Arts and Architecture to pursue research in civil society initiatives for community reformation and the Millennium Development Goals in Brazil. Through Landscape Architecture service-learning studios she is working with SEDA COG, a Pennsylvania economic development agency and small communities in the Middle Susquehanna River Valley region to develop studies for sustainable development.
Feb 15: Perry Howard, landscape architect, ASLA president
Perry Howard, program coordinator and associate professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, is currently the national president of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). He is also only one of only three black landscape architects named Fellow by the ASLA.
Howard was born in Morganza, Louisiana, and grew up in New Orleans. He received a bachelor of landscape architecture degree in 1975 from Louisiana State University, and a master of landscape architecture degree in 1982 from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He spent 1975 through 1989 working mostly on residential community designs for the landscape architecture and planning firm of Edward D. Stone Jr. and Associates in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he went on to become vice-president. Howard has served as Florida ASLA chapter secretary, and North Carolina ASLA chapter trustee and immediate past-president. He has been a member and chair of the Council of Education for ASLA, Council of Educator for Landscape Architects Regional Director, member of the Council of Landscape Architecture Registration Board’s Subject Matter Expert Committee for the Landscape Architecture Registration Examination (LARE), a LARE grader, and member of a number of Community Assistance Teams. He is a past member and vice-chair of the North Carolina Board of Landscape Architects. He is a registered Landscape Architect in the states of Florida and North Carolina.
Feb 18:Chika Okeke-Agulu, assistant professor of art history
Chika Okeke-Agulu, Penn State assistant professor of art history, was a recipient of the College of Arts and Architecture Roy C. Buck Award for Outstanding Publication (2007), and the Arts Council of the African Studies Association Outstanding Dissertation Award (2007). He teaches courses in classical, modern, and contemporary African art history and theory. Before coming to Penn State in 2004, Okeke-Agulu taught at Emory University, Atlanta; University of Nigeria, Nsukka; and Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. Okeke-Agulu was the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College (2007), and is currently a Clark Fellow at the Clark Institute.
A native of Nigeria, Okeke-Agulu received a master of fine art degree in painting from the University of Nigeria, a master of art degree in African art history from the University of South Florida, and a Ph.D. in African art history from Emory University. He has published articles and reviews in numerous journals such as Journal of Contemporary African Art, and has contributed to edited volumes such as Reading the Contemporary African Art from Theory to the Marketplace. In addition to writing catalogue essays, he has co-organized several exhibitions, including the Nigerian Pavilion at the First Johannesburg Biennale, 1995, and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2001). Okeke-Agulu served as academic consultant for Documenta 11 as well as coordinator of its Platform 4 conference in Lagos, Nigeria (2002), co-curated and wrote catalogue essays for the Fifth Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, and Strange Planet, Georgia State University Art Gallery (2004), and edited the first issue of African Arts devoted to modernism in Africa (2006). He is currently co-writing (with Okwui Enwezor) Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani Editore, 2008). He is also a practicing artist, and is co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, co-published by Cornell University.
Feb 19:Kelema Moses, Ph.D. candidate in art history
Kelema Lee Moses, Ph.D. candidate in art history at Penn State, is focusing on modern art and architecture with a minor in Asian art and architecture. Currently, her proposed field of dissertation research examines architectural relationships between public and private spaces in Puerto Rico during the twentieth century. Her advisor is Dr. Craig Zabel, head of the Department of Art History.
Moses received a master of art degree in art history from Penn State in 2007. With the aid of a Bunton-Waller Fellowship, the Penn State art history department, and the 2006 Graduate Enhancement Fund Travel Grant, she was able to complete her thesis, East Harlem During the “Great Migration” of the Mid-Twentieth Century in Art and Architecture. Her research into the extant architectural drawings of John B. Snook was recognized in Jeffrey A. Cohen’s 2004 article, “Street Wise: John B. Snook and the Architecture of Downtown.” Moses’ public lectures have included “Recreating Ayutthaya: The Transference of Buddha Images to Bangkok after the Burmese Invasion,” during the 2006 Graduate Symposium at the University of Virginia. Academic appointments at the 25th Infantry Tropic Lightning Museum (U.S. Army), Albemarle/Charlottesville Historical Society, and the New York Historical Society have also enhanced her experience within the discipline.
Feb 20: Richard J. Powell, professor of art history, Duke University
Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, is the Art Bulletin’s editor-in-chief (http://www.collegeart.org/artbulletin). He is a past recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution, among others, and received a Fulbright grant for graduate study abroad. He has been a Fellow-in-Residence at the National Humanities Center and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University, as well as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Museum Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Ednah Root Visiting Curator in American Art at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California.
Powell studied at Morehouse College and Howard University before earning his doctorate in art history at Yale University. A member of the faculty at Duke University since 1989, he teaches courses in the arts of the African Diaspora, American art, and contemporary visual studies. He has written extensively on topics ranging from primitivism to postmodernism, including such titles as Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991), Jacob Lawrence (1992), and Black Art: A Cultural History (1997 and 2002).
Powell has helped organize several art exhibitions, most recently Circle Dance: The Art of John T. Scott (2005); Back to Black: Art, Cinema, and the Racial Imaginary (2005); and Conjuring Bearden (2006), and curated exhibitions in major museums and galleries both nationally and internationally, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, London's Whitechapel Art Gallery, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Feb 21: Lonnie Graham, assistant professor of art and integrative arts
Lonnie Graham, Penn State assistant professor of art and integrative arts, was honored in October 2005 by Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell with the Hazlett Memorial Artist of the Year Award. The honor is part of the annual Governor’s Awards for the Arts honoring outstanding artists, arts organizations and patrons of the arts in Pennsylvania for their excellence and achievement in the arts. The honors are the Commonwealth’s highest recognition for artistic talent and service to the arts. Past recipients of the Artist of the Year Award include pianist Lang Lang, conductor and composer Andre Previn, and Freedom Theatre founder John Allen Jr.
Graham is a visual artist, photographer, community activist and teacher whose photographic work, installations and community-based art projects explore a complex array of social and political issues. In addition to teaching at Penn State, he is an instructor of special programs at the Barnes Foundation and a visiting instructor of graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. Previously, he was a visiting professor at Haverford College and served for many years as curator-in-residence for Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh. During his tenure as director of photography at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG) in Pittsburgh, an arts organization dedicated to the educational development of disadvantaged urban youth, he developed an after-school photography program using innovative pilot projects merging the arts and academics. One such project led to the development of the MCG Arts Collaborative, an interactive program between public schools and community organizations. The White House cited the pilot projects as a National Model for Education. Graham’s efforts also contributed to the development of the Community Development Corporation/Arts Resource Initiative (CDC/ARI), a multi-million dollar multi-year project funded by the Ford Foundation.
Graham has been involved in and won a number of major commissions concerning social and political issues. Among these are the African/American Garden Project, a physical and cultural exchange of disadvantaged urban single mothers, an elderly African American community and farmers from the small farming village in Muguga, Kenya, and a 1997 commission to travel to Papua New Guinea through the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia to document the work of the Maisins, a people who have successfully blocked the efforts of foreign logging interests to win over their property rights, and have chosen to support themselves by maintaining traditional values rooted in an ancient lifestyle.
Most recently, Graham was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts/Pew Charitable Trust Travel Grant for travels to Ghana. He is a three-time Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship recipient and has also been nominated as a DuPont Fellow and for the Cal Arts–Alpert Award in the Arts. Graham has designed a number of limited editions and catalogues, including an edition of his own work produced in photogravure, Friendship, Strength, and Vitality. He also designed the catalogue for the exhibition Countdown to Eternity, which included photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King by Ben Fernandez. His recent work, Contact Sheet, profiles people of the world and their similarities. Graham’s photo credits include co-authorship of the book, Thaddeus Mosley, African American Sculptor, and work for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford Foundation. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of African American History in Detroit; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Delaware Museum of Art; and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass.
Feb 22: Gordon Parks, photojournalist, poet, and director
Gordon Parks Sr. was a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist, and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft.
He was born on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas, the youngest of fifteen children. After his mother died when he was 16, he moved to St. Paul to live with his sister, but found himself homeless after a disagreement with his brother-in-law. He worked various odd jobs, including serving as a waiter on a train, where he noticed a magazine with photographs from the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The photos by such documentary photographers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Arthur Rothstein led him to Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices and other photo essays about poverty and racism, and inspired him to pursue photography as a career.
In 1941, he received a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation to work with Roy Stryker at the photography section of the FSA. He worked with Stryker for the next few years, honing the modernist and individualistic style he became known for by photographing small towns and industrial centers throughout America. In the late1940s, he began working as a photojournalist with Life and Vogue, during which time he did some of his most famous work, covering issues as varied as the fashion industry, poverty in Brazil, the Nation of Islam, and gang violence.
In the 1950s, Parks worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions and later directed a series of documentaries commissioned by National Educational Television on black ghetto life. By 1960, he branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree (1963), several books of poetry illustrated with his own photographs, and three volumes of memoirs. In 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major African-American director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. Parks also composed the film's musical score and wrote the screenplay.
For
more information, please contact:
Curt Marshall
Coordinator of Multicultural Programs
College of Arts and Architecture
The Pennsylvania State University
115 Arts Building
University Park, PA 16802
Phone: (814) 865-9523
Fax: (814) 865-7140