Samella Lewis, tireless champion of African American art, dies at 99
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on June 1, 2022
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When Samella Lewis began teaching art history in the 1950s and ′60s, Black artists were often shut out of major American museums, passed over in favor of European masters and White abstract expressionists. Artists of color had few opportunities to reach a wide audience, she later recalled, and “there was no African American museum west of the Mississippi.”
