Who was the first professional African-American sculptor, born in Ohio or New York in 1843 or 1845 and to a free Black American father and a Chippewa mother?
1. Edwina Long
2. Edmonia Lewis
3. Edithia Langston
4. Edith Langhorn
Edmonia Lewis
With a minimum of training, exposure, and experience, Edmonia Lewis began producing medallion portraits of well-known abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and others. With sales of her portrait busts. She was able to finance her first trip to Europe in 1865 and further her sculpture studies.
Who was the acclaimed figurative artist whose high-color paintings of women flying or falling through space were charged with racial and feminist politics?
1. Grace Martin
2. Emma Amos
3. Ernestine Anotto
4. Kay Walden
Emma Amos
As a 27-year-old graduate student in art education at New York University, Emma Amos joined the newly formed artists’ group called Spiral, with such distinguished members as Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis and the muralist Hale Woodruff. Organized in response to the 1963 March on Washington, Spiral was formed to discuss and debate the political role of black artists and their work
Who is the self-taught painter, born in 1888, who focused his work on the injustices of slavery and Jim Crow?
1. Sydney Lane
2. Horace Pippin
3. Jacob Lawrence
4. Frederick Hoppler
Horace Pippin
Horace Pippin's work while focusing on themes of African American life also included scenes inspired by his service in World War I, landscapes, portraits, and biblical subjects; many pieces of his art are included in major museum collections around the United States.
Who was known as a black and white fine art photographer and was the first African-American photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship?
1. Ronald Former
2. Samuel Taste
3. Roy De Carava
4. Gordon Parks
Roy De Carava
As a fine arts photographer Roy DeCarava, his work was the subject of at least 15 solo art exhibitions; as well, he produced five published art books as well as landmark museum catalogs and retrospective surveys from the Friends of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Who was the artist, well known for his unique style of elongation and movement, who was also a professional football player, actor and author?
1. Robert H. Colescott
2. Thornton Dial
3. Roy Rudolph DeCarava
4. Ernie Barnes
Ernie Barnes
Ernie Barnes is the first American professional athlete to become a noted painter and may be best known for his painting “The Sugar Shack” from the early 1970s, which gained international exposure when it was used on the Good Times television series and on a 1976 Marvin Gaye album.
Who is the MacArthur Fellow who is known as a painter, silhouettist, printmaker, installation artist and film-maker who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work?
1. Loïs Mailou Jones
2. Elizabeth Catlett
3. Kara Walker
4. Amy Sherald
Kara Walker
Kara Walker, listed among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in The World, is perhaps best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes.
Who was the artist who looked towards Africa and the Caribbean and her own life experience as influences in her work and was among the first of African American artists to extend beyond portraitures?
1. Sylvia Snowden
2. Janine Delaney
3. Barbara Chase-Riboud
4. Lois Mailou Jones
Lois Mailou Jones
Lois Mailou Jones, influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement and her countless international trips, joined the Howard University art department from 1930–77 where she trained, several generations of African American artists, including David Driskell, Alma Thomas and Elizabeth Catlett.
Faith Ringgold is an African American artist who expressed herself primarily in what medium?
1. Pen and ink
2. Acrylic painting
3. Children’s books
4. Quilt making
Quilt making
Faith Ringgold became famous as both an artist and author; she was known primarily for such quilts as “Tar Beach” that expressed her political concerns.
Who is the figurative painter who painted a diverse range of themes of suffering and injustice, including The Holocaust, Native American forced migrations, and Hurricane Katrina?
1. Benny Andrews
2. Eldzier Cortor
3. Kerry Marshall
4. Charles Alston
Benny Andrews
As a social activist artist Benny Andrews co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. Although he died in 2006, his works hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York City); the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Who received his freedom in 1782 and began advertising himself as a portrait painter and “limner” (an illuminator of manuscripts)?
1. Noah Johnson
2. Jerimiah Johnson
3. Isaiah Johnson
4. Joshua Johnson
Joshua Johnson
Aside from a series of portraits of white subjects, Joshua Johnson also painted furniture to earn extra income, primarily he painted chairs and so moved frequently, residing often where chair makers lived.
Who is the quilter who started quilting when she was enslaved in rural Georgia and created quilts that used traditional appliqué techniques to record local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events?
1. Harriet Powers
2. Lovey Mather
3. Harriet Tubman
4. Sadie Powers
Harriet Powers
Harriet Powers’ quilts are considered among the finest examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting. Her work is on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
Who is the iron worker who designed stunning wrought iron gates and other iron ornamental works of art throughout Charleston S.C.?
1. Jeffrey Simmons
2. Norman Simmons
3. Philip Simmons
4. Robert Simmons
Philip Simmons
Philip Simmons’ decorative iron works can be found not only in Charleston, but as well in all of the South Carolina Lowcountry; his pieces are also displayed at the Smithsonian Museum, South Carolina State Museum, and in Paris, France, and China.
Who was the painter, illustrator and visual arts educator who was a major influence in the Harlem Renaissance?
1. Jacob Lawrence
2. Romare Bearden
3. William Johnson
4. Aaron Douglass
Aaron Douglas
Aaron Douglass became involved with the art scene in Harlem after moving there in the 1920s and becoming an active member of the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1944, he concluded his art career by founding the Art Department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he taught until his retirement in 1966
Who was a leading sculptor and artist of the Harlem Renaissance who worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts?
1. Augusta Savage
2. Elizabeth Catlett
3. Maybelle Watson
4. Gloria Parks
Augusta Savage
Augusta Savage worked tirelessly for equal rights for African Americans in the arts. In 1934 she became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors
Who was the Expressionist painter and art educator, whose work is stylistically similar to West African paintings as well as Byzantine mosaic?
1. Faith Ringgold
2. Alma Woodsey Thomas
3. Jean Basquiat
4. Kara Walker
Alma Woodsey Thomas
Alma Woodsey Thomas initially creating art out of her kitchen became the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and within the same year an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Who is the New York artist who was commissioned in 2017 to paint the official portrait of former President Barack Obama?
1. Kehinde Wiley
2. Jack Whitten
3. Mark Bradford
4. David Driskell
Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley became the first African American artist to paint a president’s official portrait with his painting of President Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which houses portraits of all the U.S. presidents.
What American museum is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world?
1. Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC
2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
3. Museum of Modern Art, New York City
4. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Smithsonian American Art Museum
It's home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world, with more than two thousand works by over than two hundred African American artists.
Who is best known for her work in the field of photography , but also works with text, fabric, audio, digital images, and installation videos?
1. Carrie Weems
2. Tracy Steam
3. Sharon Block
4. Augusta Savage
Carrie Weems
Carrie Weems’ award-winning photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, sexism, politics, and personal identity.
Who is the African American painter who created such famous paintings as “The Banjo Lesson”, and “Nicodemus Visiting Jesus?"
1. Henry Ossawa Tanner
2. Horace Pippin
3. Charles White
4. Beauford Delaney
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Henry Ossawa Tanner was the African American painter who frequently depicted biblical scenes and is best known for the paintings "Nicodemus Visiting Jesus," "The Banjo Lesson" and "The Thankful Poor." He was the first African-American painter to gain international fame.
In what country did sculptor and printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett, attain citizenship after undergoing investigations by the U.S. House of Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s?
1. Ghana
2. Britain
3. Canada
4. Mexico
Mexico
In 1946 the Elizabeth Catlett and her husband, artist Charles White, went to Mexico City to work with an artists’ collective where she and White created prints depicting Mexican life. During the 1950s, because of her radical activism and the investigations in the U.S., Catlett remained in Mexico after a divorce from White. In 1962 she took citizenship of Mexico where she became one of Mexico’s most celebrated artists.
What artist is world-renowned for his graffiti work which focuses on “suggestive dichotomies”, such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience?
1. Mark Bradford
2. Jean-Michel Basquiat
3. Kerry James Marshall
4. Kehinde Wiley
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean Michel Basquiat died at the age of 24 from a heroin overdose (1988) and since that time his work has steadily increased in value. At a Sotheby's auction in May 2017, “Untitled”, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and yellow rivulets, sold for $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased. It also set a new record high for an American artist at auction.
Who was an artist whose primary influence was the shapes and colors of Harlem in his portrayal of African American life in a style he called “dynamic cubism?”
1. Romare Bearden
2. Jacob Lawrence
3. Steven Trailer
4. Horace Pippin
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence completed what is perhaps his best known work, a 60-panel set of narrative paintings entitled "Migration of the Negro", now called the "The Migration Series", in 1940–41. The New York Times recognized Jacob Lawrence as “One of America’s leading modern figurative painters
Who was the artist who used the primitive style of painting in conjunction with what was considered a "folk" style, using bright colors and two-dimensional figures to depict the experiences of African-Americans during the 1930s and '40s?
1. Norman Lewis
2. Aaron Douglas
3. William H. Johnson
4. Kerry James Marshall
William H. Johnson
In 2012, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in William Johnson's honor, recognizing him as one of the nation's foremost African-American artists and a major figure in 20th-century American art.
Gordon Park was a noted artist in what two mediums?
1. Film and oil
2. Photography and film
3. Pen & ink and pastels
4. Charcoal and oil
Photography and film
Gordon Parks was highly recognized as both a photographer and a filmmaker. He was also a musician, writer and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s.
Who is the artist whose 1984 tile mural in the Gateway Center subway station in Pittsburgh was estimated as worth $15 million which raised questions about how it should be cared for once it was removed before the station was demolished?
1. Earle Miller
2. Jacob Lawrence
3. Romare Bearden
4. William Majors
Romare Bearden
Artist, author, and songwriter, Romare Bearden worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages and in 2011, the U.S. Postal Service released a set of Forever stamps featuring four of Bearden's paintings during a first-day-of-issuance ceremony at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
