Georgette Seabrooke
| Georgette Seabrooke | |
|---|---|
 Seabrooke, 1939 | |
| Born |
August 2, 1916[1] Charleston, South Carolina[1] |
| Died | December 27, 2011 "Georgette Seabrooke Powell". |
| Nationality | American |
Georgette Seabrooke (aka Georgette Seabrooke Powell; August 2, 1916 – December 27, 2011), was an American muralist, artist, illustrator, art therapist, non-profit chief executive and educator.
Biography
Seabrooke was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew up in the New York City neighborhood of Yorkville, Manhattan. Her mother, widowed when Georgette was a child, was a domestic housekeeper, and Georgette started working with her mother. She graduated from Washington Irving High School.[2] She studied with James Lesesne Wells at the Harlem Art Workshop, and with Gwendolyn B. Bennett at the Harlem Community Art Center.[3]
In 1933, at the age of 17, she was admitted to the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art in New York, where she received a silver medal for painting.[4] While there she was chosen by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as one of four "master artists" to paint murals at Harlem Hospital. She was the youngest artist so chosen and the only female. The mural she painted, Recreation in Harlem, is nearly 20 feet long and depicts daily life in Harlem in the 1930s, including women chatting through a window and children performing in a choir. The hospital's management was not pleased with her depiction of an all-black Harlem community as they did not want to be known as a "Negro hospital." Seabrooke added eight white characters to the mural, but obscured their race in some cases and turned their face from the viewer in others. The controversy delayed Seabrooke's graduation from Cooper Union by a year.[5] Seabrooke also received a WPA commission to paint a mural at Queens General Hospital, now known as Queens Hospital Center, in Jamaica, Queens, New York.
In 2012, after being hidden from public view for many years and after surviving damage from a fire and being painted over, Recreation in Harlem and the other murals at Harlem Hospital were restored and placed on public view in the hospital's new Mural Pavilion.[6]
After Seabrooke got married and started a family with three children, she began illustrating calendars and magazines.
She went to Fordham University and studied theater design. Seabrooke moved to Washington, D.C. in 1959. She founded Operation Heritage Art Center, now known as Tomorrow's World Art Center, in 1970. In 1972 she became a registered art therapist, and the following year earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Howard University.[2] She was very active in combining art with mental-health therapy, teaching at the Tomorrow's World Art Center and at Malcolm X Park for the "Art in the Park" events.[3]
Works
- Recreation in Harlem - Harlem Hospital Center - New York City, New York
- Grandmothers's Birthday - Johnson Publishing Company - Chicago, Illinois
- Hampton Institute - Hampton, Virginia
- New York Public Library - New York City, New York
- Anacostia Museum - Washington D.C.
- Library of Congress - Washington D.C.
- Baltimore Museum of Art - Baltimore, Maryland
- Chicago Public Library - Chicago, Illinois
- Center for African American History and Culture - Washington D.C.
Awards
- 1935: Cooper Union School of Fine Arts - Silver medal for painting
- 2001: Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts
- 2002: D.C. Hall of Fame Society - Legacy Award
- 2005: Duke Ellington School of Arts
- 2008: Art Therapy Pioneer Award - American Art Therapy Association[7]
Exhibits
- 1993: "Radiance and Reality" (one woman show) - Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
- 1995: "Art Changes Things" - Smithsonian Institution - Anacostia Museum
See also
- List of WPA artists
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Georgette Powell Biography". The HistoryMakers. 2006-11-08. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Artworks This Week: Wednesday, November 22, 2006: Georgette Seabrooke Powell. - Maryland Public Television - November 22, 2006. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Artists: Georgette Seabrooke - Harlem Hospital WPA Murals - Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University - Retrieved: 2014-04-12
- ↑ "About Georgette Seabrooke Powell". The Powell Gallery. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
- ↑ "Historic WPA Mural in Harlem Restored". New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
- ↑ "At Harlem Hospital, Murals Get a New Life". New York Times. 16 September 2014. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
- ↑ "2008 Honors & Award Winners". American Art Therapy Association. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
Further reading
- Farrington, Lisa E., (2005). - Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists. - New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516721-4
- Heller, Jules and Nancy G. Heller, (1995). - North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. - New York: Garland. ISBN 978-0-8240-6049-7
External links
- Recreation in Harlem - Columbia University Institute for Research in African-American Studies - this website has much information on all the WPA murals at Harlem Hospital
- TheHistoryMakers.com: Georgette Seabrooke Powell - Oral history website features and interview with the artist and some information on her works
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