Richard J. Powell: Artist-Scholar of Black Visual Culture

Richard J. Powell is a distinguished artist, and THE definitive art historian and curator whose work bridges creative practice and rigorous scholarship in African American art. He has shaped how we see Black art in America, not just as a subject of historical study, but as an expressive and evolving interchange of concepts and narratives.

Born in Chicago, Powell received his B.A. from Morehouse College in 1975. He earned an M.F.A. in Printmaking from Howard University in 1977. Following a stint teaching at Norfolk State University, he pursued graduate studies at Yale University, where he earned his M.A. in African American Studies, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Art History. Since 1989, Powell has been on the faculty at Duke University, where he is the John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art & Art History. He also holds appointments in African & African American Studies, and in recent years has served as Director of Graduate Studies in Art, Art History & Visual Studies.

As a practicing artist, Powell is active in printmaking and drawing. His early creative work includes prints and illustrations. In the late 1970s-1980s, he contributed illustrations to literary journals and books, most notably for The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, Roseann Bell, Bettye Parker and Beverly Guy Sheftall's Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (1979), and Jessica Hagedorn's Pet Food and Tropical Apparitions (1981). His artist side helps inform his scholarly eye; he understands material, visual rhythm, pattern, line, all of the things that show up both in his own creations and in his analyses. His works are in the permanent collections of the Bradford Art Galleries and Museums (Bradford, UK), the Library of Congress, the Yale University Art Gallery, and Duke University. In 1979 the Studio Museum in Harlem enlisted Powell as guest curator for Impressions/Expressions: Black American Graphics, one of the first art museum surveys of works by African American printmakers. Since then, he has curated numerous important exhibitions of African-American artists that have been seen by millions.

Powell has earned many honors: among them, the James A. Porter Award for Excellence in African American Art Scholarship (Howard University), and multiple fellowships and grants from bodies like the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a teacher and mentor, he has influenced generations of students in art history, African American studies, and visual arts. His courses often cover American art, the African Diaspora, and contemporary visual studies, demonstrating his interest in both historical depth and current visual culture.

Richard J. Powell discusses Robert Blackburn’s printshop and shares how his relationship with Blackburn shaped his journey from being an artist to becoming a curator and historian.

Selected texts

Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (1991)

Black Art: A Cultural History , (1997, revised in 2002) One of his signature works, often used as a foundational text in Black art history courses.

Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (2008)

Rhapsodies in Black: The Art of the Harlem Renaissance

To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, (1999)

Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, (2015)

Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow, (2002)

James Lesesne Wells: Sixty Years in Art, (1986)

Exhibitions

Forty Years: Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop, Inc., Metro-Dade Cultural Center, Miami, FL, 1988

Through A Master Printer: ROBERT BLACKBURN and the Printmaking Workshop, Columbia Museum of Art, SC, 1985

35 under 35, New York Urban League / Lever House, NY, 1980