📚 #ArtIsAWeapon
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth
Bless the Black artists, archivists, historians and libriarans!
#DorothyPorter #JamesAmosPorter
🖼✍️🏾reposted from @smithsonian Librarian Dorothy Porter and artist and art historian James Amos Porter, her husband, preserved and shared Black history and culture at Howard University for four decades.
The pair met at the @NYPL’s Harlem branch. Dorothy worked at the branch as a librarian while she was getting her master’s degree in library sciences from Columbia University. James was there for research.
Both Howard graduates, the Porters returned to their alma mater to serve generations of Black college students.
Dorothy built the collections focused on African American history at Howard into the great Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Renowned for her tenacity, she discovered books and archival materials in private collections, attics, and even in trash cans.
James chaired the university’s art department and founded the field of African American art history. He championed underrecognized Black artists through organized exhibitions and published work.
James painted this portrait of Dorothy when they were 22 years into their marriage. He chose to depict his wife in front of a Haitian landscape, perhaps referencing their travels to that country. Five years later, he painted this self-portrait at his easel, paintbrush in hand.
#SmithsonianBHM
Credits:
“Dorothy Porter” by James Amos Porter, 1952. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of the Westport Foundation, Dorothy Porter Wesley, Trustee
“James Amos Porter Self-Portrait” by James Amos Porter, 1957. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Dorothy Porter Wesley.