University Museum at Texas Southern Permanent Collection
Title
University Museum at Texas Southern Permanent Collection
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Oliver’s etching shows an idyllic scene, with a young boy surrounded by Texan flora and fauna. These include a muscovy duck, a goat, a turtle, a pumpkin, and more plants. Oliver grew up in Refugio in southeastern Texas, attended TSU, and moved to Waco after his graduation. Texas wildlife is a frequent subject of Oliver’s work, including his Hermes scarves.
Criner's print uses forced perspective to depict a field of oversized yams and a mother picking from the land, with her children alongside. The son and daughter each hold baskets, presumably full of freshly harvested yams. Yams are a staple crop in West African culture and cuisine. In the African diaspora, sweet potatoes sometimes take yams’ place.
Askia’s drawing depicts a weary woman at work, stooped over a woven basket. As a student, Askia made a series of drawings that highlight Black women and the different types of labor they perform. Feminist thinkers have long argued that unpaid, domestic labor performed by women is often rendered invisible in discussions of their contributions.
This print by Trudell Mimms shows a woman gazing to her right, with unidentifiable figures in the background. In Black Art in Houston: The Texas Southern University Experience, Dr. John T. Biggers referred to Mimms as "one of our finest painters."
Williams' drawing depicts a woman dressed in a large, flowing garment with her hair covered, pouring water into a bin. Behind her, a checkerboard quilt hangs over a clothesline to dry. This piece highlights some of the unseen and unappreciated domestic labor performed by Black women. The checkerboard motif was frequently used by Dr. John Biggers and often appears in the artwork of his students.
Boyd's painting is inspired by philosopher Charles W. Mills's book, "Blackness Visible." Boyd's painting responds to the question of "what makes Blackness visible?" with, in her words, "three possible answers to this: our culture, our revolutions, and/or our d/Death. Is it our culture? Our revolution? Our d/Death? Or is it an amalgamation of all three?" The artist is a graduate of Texas Southern University and cites her parents, who always encouraged her to write and draw, as creative inspirations.
Lloyd’s painting depicts the facade of the historic Wesley Chapel AME Church, founded in Houston’s Third Ward in the 1870s. The landscape and sky are painted in geometric form, commonly found in 1970s TSU student artwork. The church is set to be renovated and turned into a multi-purpose complex with a gospel music museum, recording studio, and affordable housing units.
Vital's painting depicts a bird feeding a worm to its three offspring, reflecting the theme of the mother & child(ren) relationship that often appears in TSU student work. The artist often featured animals and nature in his work. After his graduation, Vital taught art for many years at Texas Southern.
Obey’s print is a self-portrait. Under the direction of Dr. Biggers and Professor Simms, students would paint and draw self-portraits and sometimes sculpt self-portraits of their busts. This print depicts Obey in her bra; she also painted a self-portrait in a similar style. Biggers once referred to Obey as "one of our finest painters.”
This work by Earl Jones is an abstract, desert landscape of barren trees, emerging from red and orange rings in the ground. Jones was a student at Texas Southern in the mid-1970s and was taught by artists and instructors like Dr. John T. Biggers and Professor Carroll Harris Simms. Biggers frequently urged his students to draw inspiration from nature and their immediate surroundings.
Oliver's painting depicts an accord between settlers and a group of indigenous Americans. Colonizers consistently broke their agreements with tribes and took more and more land from them. Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest are frequent subjects of Oliver's work.
Leonard Henderson's cool-colored composition depicts a calm landscape of farmers working a field next to train tracks. The tracks running next to the field may hint at the contrast between urban and rural life, and show the development of rural areas during the turn of the 20th century.
Tinker's drawing appears to portray three generations of women, with a baby, her mother, and her grandmother. The mother holds her daughter and her bottle; the grandmother stands behind them with her hands crossed. Dr. Biggers’ artwork often centered women and their contributions to the family and society. He passed these themes along to his students, who, like Tinker, frequently highlight the relationship between mother and child.
Green's drawing depicts a central female figure, deep in thought, surrounded by faint, whispering figures. The scene is reminiscent of a queen's court, with the monarch encircled by attendants and advisors. Green taught painting and printmaking courses at Texas Southern until his retirement in 2024.
Davis's sculpture depicts a stylized version of the artist's head and neck, with a removable crown piece. The crown looks like a turtle with an insect atop it. The neck, crown, and forehead are all adorned with swirls, the most common motif in the terracottas of Simms' students.
Moore’s bust was created during his time as an art student at TSU. Under the instruction of Professor Carroll Harris Simms, artists would create self-portraits embellished with decorations like spirals and accentuated crown pieces, like in Moore’s sculpture. Moore’s crown details include horns on both sides, green holes in the head, and a miniature mask in the center of the forehead. These busts are inspired by Nok terracotta sculptures and Ife busts, which Simms saw during his travels to Western Africa.
In the center of this drawing, a mother, wearing her child on her back, floats on the back of a tortoise, flanked by a female and male carving. Lilypads float alongside them, while fish swim throughout the pond. In the sky, a lily covers the full moon, while a turtle flies into the night, representing the connection between the terrestrial and celestial. While living in Houston, Dr. Biggers often walked along Buffalo Bayou in the morning, watching fish swim as the sun slowly replaced the moon in the sky.
Moe’s drawing shows three elderly women working together to craft a quilt. Quilting is a traditional craft of Southern Black women, and also an important community activity. Moe’s composition is set against black paper and drawn all in white, with the exception of the vibrant colors of the quilt. This shows the richness of the communities and lives embodied in the quilt.
Sifuentes' print depicts the exterior of an old church. An adult and small child are seen entering the church, which lies at the end of a winding path. Chickens are seen pecking at the ground, lending a sense of place to this rural scene. Churches and other religious imagery appear frequently in the artwork of Texas Southern students. Sifuentes later went on to become an art professor at Texas Southern.
Donato's painting shows a crowd gathering around him after a car crash, but not rendering aid. Donato crafts a scene that blends reality and fiction: he portrays himself bloodied like Jesus on the cross, surrounded by real neighbors of his from Frenchtown, a section of Houston's Fifth Ward, but there was no such car crash.
This work, by Oliver Parson, is a calm and dreamlike scene of a child sitting in a prairie, as an angel and a person both race towards him. Both figures may represent salvation; the person aims to rescue him from death, while the angel tries to save him from Earth. A faint glow emanates from the child.
Sampson’s print shows a large, colorful dog drinking from a pail of water. The setting appears rural, with a wooden fence and a large tree in the background. Sampson’s artwork in TSU’s permanent collection often depicts nature and rural homes. More broadly, animals and the natural world are frequent subjects of the artwork of TSU students.
Parson's print shows a face with closed eyes and a solemn expression on its face. In the background, three crosses stand ominously, alluding to the crosses where Jesus, Dismus, and Gestas were crucified. Dark, crosshatched swirls fill the entire composition. Parson and other TSU students learned the crosshatching technique from Dr. Biggers and used it to create smooth, detailed shapes.
Parson’s painting shows a young girl shielding her face. To the left, a crow holds a coin and a dollar bill is on a fishing line; to the right Jesus is crucified, below a perched crow. The crows may allude to Jim Crow, which made racism law from after the Civil War until the 1960s; crows are also a symbol of death. The dollar bill as bait perhaps suggests the corrupting nature of money.
This print by Harry Vital shows a woman in a swimsuit tilting her head upwards. Dr. John T. Biggers taught students the craft of printmaking while he was a professor at Texas Southern University. Vital followed in Biggers' footsteps and became a longtime art professor at TSU.
“Sun Stool,” created by Anthony Haynes, resembles an Ashanti stool, a seat for royalty of the Ashanti Empire. The sculpture is decorated with spiral embellishments, triangles, moons, and other indentations. Facial features are also included at the front head of the stool; the rear face of the stool resembles a baboon's face.
This drawing by Oliver Parson shows a group of emaciated children seated on a checkerboard patterned floor. There is also a chick, just hatched from its egg, that seems to be struggling to survive. Parson has an incredible talent for conveying powerful emotions in his works. The checkerboard and other sacred geometry imagery appear frequently in the works of Dr. Biggers's students.
Washington’s landscape painting shows a suburban setting, with a paved road, low homes, and a mix of palm and deciduous trees. Washington grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, a small oil city along the Gulf Coast. This scene is perhaps reminiscent of Washington’s home and early life. Dr. John Biggers encouraged Texas Southern student artists to create art based on what they saw – perhaps this instruction inspired Washington’s painting.
In this drawing by Willie Moe, a group of children gather around an elderly man in a rocking chair to hear his stories. Oral storytelling is an essential part of preserving the past, particularly in communities that have been denied the opportunity to write their own histories.
This watercolor painting by Frank Perkins features a scene at a baseball stadium. This work may be an homage to the Negro Leagues, which offered Black baseball players the chance to play professionally prior to Jackie Robinson's integration of Major League Baseball. Iconic Black baseball players like Robinson, Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and many more played in the Negro Leagues.
