Award Winners for Volume 18
Black Excellence in Art/Art Education: A Critical Portrait of Murry N. DePillars
This article addresses how research can uncover and amplify long-marginalized histories to transform the field of art education through examination of the life and work of Dean Murry DePillars. Dr. DePillars is the longest serving dean of the School of the Arts (VCUarts) at Virginia Commonwealth University (1976–1995) and the first African American to serve as dean of VCUarts. Little research exists on art educators as artists, specifically Black art educators as artists, administrators, and leaders of universities/art programs. DePillars was not only an administrative leader, educator, and scholar, but a renowned artist and arts activist. In presenting this research, we hope to broaden and deepen the knowledge of DePillars as artist, art educator, scholar, and administrative leader and create a model for similar critical portraiture research on other marginalized artist/art educators.
The impact of Black Excellence in Art/Art Education: A Critical Portrait of Murry N. DePillars on the field of art education is critical. As a field art education has very few scholars researching the history of art education. In 2015 three well-known U.S. art education historians developed a conference, Brushes with History at Teachers College, Columbia University (my alma mater) to specifically address histories of art education and in particular histories of marginalized art educators. In 2023 Teachers College held an international art education history conference where I presented our research on Murry N. DePillars. The only other time such a conference took place was at the Pennsylvania State University (Ryan Patton’s alma mater) in 1985 and 1989. The result of the 2015 conference was an anthology of articles based on presentations and a special call for articles on the history of art education in the Studies in Art Education journal.
A colleague asked me about the history of art education for Black students in Washington, DC, where I am from and am a fifth-generation educator. I decided to do some research and published an article (2017) in the special issue of Studies in Art Education that has since put Thomas Watson Hunster (1851-1929), back on the radar for his extraordinary contributions to the field of art education for Black learners and educators. This article was cited by art historians and curators for the Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful exhibition in 2021-22. Thomas was a student of Hunster’s. In conducting research for this article, I developed the Critical Portraiture framework used in Black Excellence in Art/Art Education: A Critical Portrait of Murry N. DePillars. In writing the DePillars’ article I had the opportunity to deepen and expand my theory and put it to practice on a more recent subject. When Ryan and I decided to do a presentation on Dr. DePillars for Virginia Commonwealth University’s 50th anniversary, we had no idea how far that research would go. Since that presentation on campus in 2018 a building has been renamed in his honor and a statue put up. Additionally, our professional organization, the National Art Education Association (NAEA), has developed a special interest group, History & Historiography in Art Education, for art education scholars interested in art education history. Since 2015 several publications have been produced on global histories in art education, providing the field with a wealth of scholarship on diverse art educators. Prior to 2015, there was one text, A history of art education: Intellectual and social currents in teaching the visual arts, most of us used that made no mention of the contributions of BIPOC art educators and programs. Prior to my research on Hunster I had not done any art education history research. With the success of both articles, I plan to continue history research and testing out the Critical Portraiture framework.
—Pamela Harris Lawton