Robert L. Douglas And Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde

Sam Gilliam you may know. Robert L. Douglas you likely don’t.

Gilliam’s abstract drape paintings featuring colorful unstretched canvases hanging like curtains are a fixture at America’s most prestigious art museums. When he passed in June of 2022, his obituary appeared in the New York Times, and CNN, and NPR, and the Washington Post. He is a consensus stalwart of American modernism.

Gilliam and Douglas were confidants in Louisville dating back to the 1950s. While Gilliam’s great professional fame came from his time in Washington, D.C., he attended college at the University of Louisville, Douglas’ hometown.

Together with a group of other local artists including Bob Thompson, who would go on to tremendous posthumous acclaim following his brief career, Douglas and Gilliam established Gallery Enterprises (1957-1961), a visual arts collective in Louisville dedicated to creating opportunities for Black artists to share and discuss their work and build audiences.

This, remember, was Jim Crow America. Louisville, remember, is in the South. The Civil Rights Act wouldn’t be signed until 1964 and galleries, museums and public spaces in Kentucky were hardly welcoming to Black artists, despite their talent.

An artist, an activist, an organizer and eventually an educator, Douglas would co-found Gallery Enterprises’ successor, the Louisville Art Workshop. Gilliam was a member. The Workshop publicly debuted in January 1967 with a show at a converted West End Louisville storefront. Louisville’s West End is the city’s historic Black neighborhood.

The Louisville Art Workshop was the only space for artists of color to routinely exhibit their work in the city. As such, artists from around the state and region traveled to exhibit and see their robust exhibition program which included sculpture, photography, poetry, creative writing, music and theater.

Despite his abilities and experience, Douglas was shut out of the broader Louisville arts scene early in his career due to discriminatory hiring practices. The city that once turned its back on Douglas now honors him as the Speed Art Museum presents “Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Professor Robert L. Douglas” through October 1, 2023.

“Robert L. Douglas pioneered a transformative artistic collective and spent decades dedicated to mentoring the next generation of artists,” Raphaela Platow, Executive Director at Speed Art Museum, told Forbes.com. “Despite their talent and influence, Douglas and many of his contemporaries who remained in Louisville to foster the city’s artistic community have historically been overlooked by major institutions—an exclusion that the Speed aims to address.”

One way it will be doing so is through this exhibition, the first of a series exploring the pioneering artists behind the Louisville Art Workshop who mentored and transformed the careers of Louisville artists, many of whom went on to shape the cultural DNA of the city and major cities across the United States. While some of the group’s artists including Gilliam and Ed Hamilton gained national renown, “Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde” is the first examination at a major institution of the Workshop’s influence as a whole, aiming to shed new light on the core members and leaders who have often been overlooked or excluded from the story of American art history.

Robert L. Douglas

Robert L. Douglas’ career spans more than six decades as a master draftsman, painter, and sculptor as well as a teacher and mentor to generations of artists and scholars. Douglas taught at the University of Louisville for more than 35 years, most recently as Professor Emeritus until passing away in February 2023 at age 88.

Featuring more than 30 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, ‘Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Professor Robert L. Douglas” presents rarely seen work from throughout his career, demonstrating the breadth of his practices and the continued relevance of his work in examining and reflecting the Black community in Louisville.

“This is indeed a great honor and opportunity, having visited the Speed Museum since my thirteenth birthday (my present to myself),” Douglas said before passing. “Having my life and purpose as I have come to understand it shared with my community through my paintings and sculptures will give visualization to my life, also as a scholar and educator.”

Why did Douglas remain in Louisville when greater career opportunities as an artist presented themselves elsewhere?

“I believe that he stayed because he was committed to changing his hometown for the better,” Speed Art Museum Curator of Academic Engagement and Special Projects fari nzinga told Forbes.com. “With the collective energy and efforts of the Gallery Enterprises and Louisville Art Workshop, he must have felt like there was the will and capacity for change to take place. He also worked with Anne and Carl Braden as a community organizer because he was not satisfied with what he termed the polite racism he experienced in Louisville and wanted better for his children.”

Douglas stood tall as both an artistic and community leader providing a creative focus for artists who were overlooked from gallery spaces and the Speed’s own walls to exhibit art, mentor, and nurture young talent, forging a vibrant community of artists.

He was also resolute in uplifting Black representation.

“Paintings, sculptures, writings and my teaching have been my self-conscious expressions that celebrate the significance, the beauty and the historical contributions of African people, affirming their potential for progress and greatness,” Douglas’ artist statement reads.

Louisville Art Workshop

The Louisville Art Workshop went beyond display, serving as a creative hub in the city with a variety of educational workshops and critiques for artists to hone their craft. The group’s community-centered approach fostered a dynamic and forward-thinking atmosphere that challenged artistic and cultural norms, and was notably one of the only integrated artistic groups at the time.

“What made this space liberating was that Black creativity was the standard and it was not beholden to nor controlled by white norms and social/political mores; and further, the art-making didn’t focus on generating profit or revenue,” nzinga said.

Inspired by revolutionary art theory and the ongoing Civil Rights movement, Douglas and his contemporaries embraced the concept of artists using their creations to liberate an oppressed people, while acknowledging that the mainstream art industry would deny them resources and platform to showcase their work.

“Most curators and scholars were focused on European great masters and the main stakeholders of Western art history rather than local talent in the area,” nzinga explained. “The Gallery Enterprises and Louisville Art Workshop created more spaces and became the major vehicles for Black artists to showcase their work. Students of all backgrounds worked together to create and curate experiences in public spaces like bars The Brown Derby and Joe’s Palm Room, as well as open air art festivals in Louisville’s Central Park.”

Douglas brought his activist’s perspective to the Louisville Art Workshop, helping establish a social mission for the organization whose ultimate goal was to support and uplift the community instead of measuring success based on commercial interests.

Next up in the Speed’s exhibition series highlighting the Louisville Art Workshop is a show for sculptor William M. Duffy.

“Without understanding the legacy of Robert L. Douglas, his contemporaries shaping Louisville’s artistic community, and the throughlines of these two major Louisville collectives, one cannot grasp the full picture of the American art landscape,” nzinga said. “It is simply incomplete on a local and national level. The artists affiliated with this period have lived with these histories, and these exhibits offer one way to recenter attention to their art and legacy, as well as introduce a wider audience to the lasting impact of this moment in our art history.”