The Driskell Center welcomes inaugural recipient of the David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence
March 31, 2023
Driskell Center is proud to announce that Lucy Quezada Yáñez, a PhD candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, is the inaugural recipient of the David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Mr. David Conway
Title: Archivist
Phone: 301-405-2984, Email: dconway@umd.edu
DAVID C. DRISKELL CENTER WELCOMES INAUGURAL RECIPIENT OF THE
DAVID C. AND THELMA G. DRISKELL AWARD FOR CREATIVE EXCELLENCE
COLLEGE PARK, MD. – 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, College Park, is pleased to announce that Lucy Quezada Yáñez, a PhD candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, is the inaugural recipient of the David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence. Ms. Yáñez is a Chilean art historian specializing in twentieth-century Latin American art. She has published extensively. Her dissertation topic concerns the construction of official discourses about the visual arts in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile during the military dictatorships of the 1960s to 1980s. Part of her research focuses on Afro-Brazilian art practices and histories, and governmentally sanctioned initiatives that promoted Afro-Brazilian art during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). That aspect of her dissertation project will be the initial focus of her work with the David C. Driskell Papers and the Center’s Archives’ other collections. Ms. Yáñez begins a three-week residency in the Driskell Center’s Archives on April 4, 2023.
ABOUT THE AWARD
The David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence, created in partnership with the University of Maryland’s Arts for All initiative, is designed to provide emerging scholars and artists with access to the Center’s collections in order to conduct new research or create new artistic work that furthers the Center’s mission of expanding and deepening the field of African diasporic studies in the visual arts. The awardee is expected to commit to 2–3 weeks in residence at the Driskell Center. While the Driskell Center will serve as the primary location of research, the University of Maryland’s proximity to Washington, D.C., allows easy access to other locations for study, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture (and the other museums of the Smithsonian), the National Gallery of Art, and a variety of historical sights and monuments. Over the course of the residency, the awardee will document their work through a series of public writings and participate in public programming of their work at the Driskell Center.
ABOUT THE DAVID C. DRISKELL CENTER AND THE CENTER’S ARCHIVES
The David C. Driskell Center honors the legacy of David C. Driskell—a Distinguished University Professor of Art, Artist, Art Historian, Collector, Curator, and Philanthropist—by preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture. The Driskell Center is committed to preserving, documenting, and presenting African American art, as well as replenishing and expanding the field of African American art. All programs at the David C. Driskell Center are free and open to the public. The facility is wheelchair accessible. For further information regarding exhibitions and activities at the Driskell Center, please call 301-314-2615 or visit driskellcenter.umd.edu. The Driskell Center’s programming is supported in part by a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and private donors.
Since 2001, the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, has sought to create an intellectual home for scholars seeking a fuller understanding of the American art canon. That understanding can only come about through a reckoning with the outsized accomplishments of artists of African American and African descent. That was David C. Driskell’s lifelong vision and his motivation for assembling an archive, the David C. Driskell Papers, over the course of five decades, that he would eventually donate to the Center in 2011. The Driskell Center’s Archives has grown to house multiple collections, including the Faith Ringgold Study Room Collection, the Harmon Foundation Papers, the Hayes-Benjamin Papers on African American Art and Artists, the Alonzo Davis Collection, and the Michael D. Harris Collection.