Collection Connection

Learn more about art in one-hour presentations by regional experts. FREE and open to the public.

Peggy Jones – Aaron Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance

The “New Negro” aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance were often in defiance to earlier generational calls for “art as propaganda” which W. E. B. Du Bois had made in his essay, “Criteria of Negro Art.” The courageous artists of this era, including Aaron Douglas and William E. Artis, wished to collaboratively create a new and modern art era, which they did.

Peggy Jones is an award-winning playwright/visual artist and theatre professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is the author of six essays in Painting from the Collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art. Artists about whom she wrote include Aaron Douglas, Loïs Mailou Jones and Charles Alston. She received a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship for her play, The Journey, about the father of modern Black American art, Aaron Douglas.

Sponsored by The Terra Foundation for American Art, established in 1978 and with offices in Chicago and Paris, the foundation supports organizations and individuals locally and globally through its grant program, collection, and initiatives. Its aim is to foster intercultural dialogues and encourage transformative practices that expand narratives of American art.