By and About Women: The Collection of Dr. Dianne Whitfield-Locke and Dr. Carnell Locke

The Harvey B. Gantt Center is delighted to present By and About Women: The Collection of Dr. Dianne Whitfield-Locke and Dr. Carnell Locke. Dr. Whitfield-Locke and her husband, Dr. Carnell Locke, are avid art collectors and are also committed supporters of artists and African-American art institutions.

By and About Women highlights selected works from their extensive collection which were either created by female artists or feature women as the subject. Like their larger collection, this exhibition represents a comprehensive history of art-making in general, and African-American art, specifically.  Sculpture, sketches, oils, acrylics, paintings and collages fill the gallery.

Masterpieces by pioneering women including Betye Saar, Camille Billops, Samella Lewis, Elizabeth Catlett, Emma Amos, Lois Mailou Jones, Faith Ringgold, and Augusta Savage headline the exhibition. The Lockes have also gathered work by E. J. Montgomery, Howardena Pindell, and Jacob Lawrence’s wife, Gwendolyn Knight.  Works by multi-media artists such as Robin Holder, Clarissa Sligh, Margo Humphrey and Alison Saar also appear in the gallery. 

Dr. Whitfield-Locke is passionate about collecting and has filled their home with art by master African-American artists working during the last 100 years.  She has served on the board of the International Review of African American Art, the most significant publication in the field -- now based at Hampton University – and has been a major supporter of the James Porter Colloquium at Howard University and the David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland.

FEATURED ARITSTS

• Emma Amos (b. 1938)
• Juanita Anderson
• Camille Billops (b. 1933)
• Chakaia Booker (b. 1953)
• Margaret T. Burroughs (1915 - 2012)
• Vivian E. Browne (1929 - 1993)
• Elizabeth Catlett (1915 - 2012)
• Irene Clark (1927 - 1984)
• Tanya Murphy Dodd
• Robin Holder (b. 1952)
• Margo Humphrey (b. 1942)
• Loïs Mailou Jones (1905 - 1998)
• Gwendolyn Knight (1913 - 2005)
• Samella Lewis (b. 1924)
• Evangeline J. Montgomery (b. 1933)
• Mary Lovelace O’Neal (b. 1942)
• Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
• Barbara Chase Riboud (b. 1939)
• Faith Ringgold (b. 1930)
• Alison Saar (b. 1956)
• Betye Saar (b. 1926)
• Augusta Savage (1892 - 1962)
• Joyce J. Scott (b. 1948)
• Clarissa Sligh (b. 1939)
• Gilda Snowden (1954 - 2014)
• Rénee Stout (b. 1958)
• Sharon E. Sutton (b. 1941)
• Alma Thomas (1891 - 1978)
• Yvonne Edwards Tucker (b. 1941)
• Ruth Waddy (1909 - 2003)
• Shirley Woodson Reid (b. 1936)
• Joyce Wellman (b. 1949)
• Deborah Willis (b. 1948)
• Elizabeth Youngblood (b. 1952)

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dr. Michael D. Harris is an artist, scholar, curator and professor presently teaching at Emory University in Atlanta. As a scholar, Harris has published Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (2003) and has contributed to or co-authored a number of other publications. He has had articles on contemporary African art and African-American art published in a number of books and journals.

Harris is among the few African-American scholars to hold terminal degrees in studio art, African-American Studies and in art history. Also a practicing artist, Harris has been a member of the artist collective AfriCOBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, since 1979 and has exhibited across the United States, in the Caribbean, and in Europe. His work is represented in the collections of Morehouse College, Howard University, University of North Carolina, the City of Atlanta, the Hampton University Museum, Dillard University, the David Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at University of Alabama, the Atlanta airport and in many private collections.  Dr. Harris earned his BA in Education at Bowling Green State University; MFA in Painting, Howard University; MA in African-American Studies, Yale; MA, MPhil, and Ph.D. in History of Art from Yale University.