The Driskell Center Announces the 2025 James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History
March 14, 2025
Announcing 2025 James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEWS RELEASE
Date: March 14, 2025
Contact: Abby Eron
Title: Assistant Director, Exhibitions & Programs
Phone: 301-405-6835
Email: events-driskellcenter@umd.edu
The Driskell Center Announces the 2025 James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History
College Park, Md. – The David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park announces Lisa Gail Collins, PhD, as this year’s James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History, for her book, Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt (University of Washington Press, 2023).
Lisa Gail Collins is Professor of Art on the Sarah Gibson Blanding Chair and Director of the American Studies Program at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She is author of The Art of History: African American Women Artists Engage the Past (Rutgers University Press, 2002), Art by African-American Artists: Selections from the 20th Century (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), and Arts, Artifacts, and African Americans: Context and Criticism (Michigan State University, 2007). She is coeditor, with Margo Natalie Crawford, of New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (Rutgers University Press, 2006) and coauthor of African-American Artists, 1929-1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003).
Her most recent book, Stitching Love and Loss, published in 2023, analyzes perseverance and creativity of the African American women quilters in this rural Black Belt community.
The award includes an honorarium and will be presented at the 2025 Annual David C. Driskell Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, April 3, 2025.
ABOUT THE DRISKELL CENTER
The Driskell Center is a creative incubator at the University of Maryland dedicated to a world where Black artists exist at its center. We invite inquiry, experimentation and dialogue to reexamine histories and shape shared futures.
Admission to the gallery and all events is always free. For more information and to plan your visit see our website at https://driskellcenter.umd.edu/visit.
ABOUT THE JAMES A. PORTER & DAVID C. DRISKELL BOOK AWARD
In March 2013, the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland established the James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History. This award, which honors Professors Driskell and Porter’s legacies in the field of African American art, was created for the purpose of encouraging original research and scholarly writing on historical subjects pertaining to African American visual culture. Previous winners of the James A. Porter & David C. Driskell Book Award in African American Art History include Bridget R. Cooks, Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (Massachusetts University Press, 2011), Christa Clarke, African Art in the Barnes Foundation: The Triumph of L'Art nègre and the Harlem Renaissance (Barnes Foundation/ Skira Rizzoli, 2015), Shawnya L. Harris, Expanding Tradition: Selections from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection (Georgia Museum of Art, 2017), Wil Haygood, I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100 (Columbus Museum of Art/ Rizzoli, 2018), Adrienne Childs, Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition (Phillips Collection/ Rizzoli, 2020), and Huey Copeland and Steven Nelson, eds., Black Modernisms in the Transatlantic World (National Gallery of Art/ Yale University Press, 2023).
ABOUT DAVID C. DRISKELL
Trained as a painter and art historian, David C. Driskell worked primarily in collage and mixed media. Driskell maintained an active career as a practicing artist, teacher, curator, collector, art administrator, and art consultant for more than 60 years. He lectured across the globe, and his works are included in major collections of art museums throughout the world. Professor Driskell authored five exhibition catalogues on the subject of African American art. He was the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and prizes, including three Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships and a Harmon Foundation Fellowship. In 2000, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton. In 2005, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA established the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award to honor contributions to the field of African American art and art history.
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