Friends of the Wichita Art Museum Howard E.
Wooden Lecture.

5 pm| Galleries open |
6 pm | Cash bar and festive mingling
6:45 pm | Illustrated talk

Join art historian and public scholar Dr. Renée Ater as she explores the paintings of Aaron Douglas (1899–1979). A Topeka native, Douglas—one of our state’s most important artists—became a leading painter of the Harlem Renaissance as Black art and culture flourished in New York during the 1920s. Douglas’ signature style combines African and African American stories with modernist geometry to create artworks that explore the African American experience. Dr. Ater will provide a deeper look at Douglas’ 1935 painting Noah’s Ark, which is on view at WAM in the exhibition "American Art Deco: Designing for the People, 1918–1939." Douglas illustrated poetry by James Weldon Johnson in 1927. This Wooden Lecture considers Aaron Douglas’ painting Noah’s Ark in the context of Johnson’s God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, his 1927 book of poems based on folk sermons. After creating the illustrations for Johnson, Douglas returned to the imagery from God’s Trombones in several of his most important oil paintings, including Noah’s Ark. Exploring the collaboration between Douglas and Johnson, Ater argues that the artist and the author created a vibrant Christian iconography from a uniquely Black perspective. Dr. Ater is Provost Visiting Associate Professor, Africana Studies, at Brown University and Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has published widely on African American artists including Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Keith Morrison. Her current research focuses on the intersection of race, monument building, and national identity.