First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

filed in Single Women's Hall of Fame

Michelle and Barack Have Great Taste in Art

October 7, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

I hadn’t thought much about White House art, until I read a piece in today’s New York Times that listed the paintings the Obamas selected to hang in their private residence, and the West and East Wings. Their choices were bold and modern, and included many well-known artists like Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns, and also an African-American abstract painter, Alma Thomas, whom I’m cramming to learn more about. Here are a few facts. She was born in Georgia, raised in Washington, D.C., and accomplished the near impossible, irrespective of race, becoming a successful artist during her lifetime. Alma was the first woman to graduate from Howard University with a Fine Arts degree, and the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This painting, Watusi (Hard Edge) by Alma Thomas, 1963, is now on loan to the White House.

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