David C. Driskell Center's Archives Receives Gift of Major Artist's Archive, the Alonzo Davis Collection

The Driskell Center will be home to the Alonzo Davis Collection, a gift from the artist.

By David C. Driskell Center Staff

The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland is proud to announce that the Driskell Center’s Archives will be home to the Alonzo Davis Collection. The gift from the artist is in line with the mission of the center to celebrate the legacy of African American artists and to ensure that they become part of the American art canon. The Driskell Center received a major gift from the Mellon Foundation to support this initiative. Davis also graciously donated the Alonzo Davis Fund, which gives an undergraduate art history student the opportunity to work in the Driskell Center’s Archives assisting in the processing of his collection.

The acquisition of the Alonzo Davis Collection, the personal and professional archive of artist, educator, gallery owner, Alonzo Davis, brings a new dimension to the Driskell Center’s Archives and represents a significant expansion of the research potential the center offers.

Currently based in Hyattsville, Maryland, Alonzo Davis was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, and moved to Los Angeles in his early teens. After graduating from Pepperdine University, Davis later earned his M.F.A. in design and printmaking at Otis College of Art and Design (then Otis Art Institute) in 1973. It was at Otis that Davis studied with influential artist Charles White (1918-1979). Davis and his brother, Dale Brockman Davis, went on to found the Brockman Gallery in South Los Angeles in 1967. The Brockman, which the brothers owned and operated until 1991, was the first major Black-owned gallery in Los Angeles, furthering the careers of many Black artists. Alonzo Davis became involved in the California mural movement and his well-known mural, Eye on ’84, was created that year to commemorate the Olympics in Los Angeles.

Davis’ vision is often expressed in mixed media works, executed in series, allowing the artist to fully “exhaust” an idea before moving on. Moreover, they often bridge the arts by, for example, involving musicians and dancers to interact with the works, notably with his Power Poles. His artistic practice is informed by a life of travel and ongoing engagement with issues surrounding climate change and the struggle for social justice.

Davis has held numerous positions at academic institutions as a professor and administrator, including The San Antonio Art Institute, where he was dean of academic affairs and vice president, and at Memphis College of Art, where he was director of graduate studies.

The Driskell Center has begun receiving and creating an initial inventory of the Alonzo Davis Collection. The entire collection, which is expected to reach 75 linear feet once it is fully onsite in Spring 2023, will include correspondence; journals containing notes and sketches; material related to exhibitions of Davis’ and other artists’ work; materials documenting his travels and residencies at art institutions around the world; materials documenting public art and commissions; documents related to the running of the Brockman Gallery; academic materials; news clippings; ephemera; photographs; 35mm slides; and audiovisual material, all documenting Alonzo Davis’ transcontinental and international career in the arts, now in its seventh decade.

The Alonzo Davis Fund was also generously donated by the artist with the goal of giving undergraduate art history students at the University of Maryland the opportunity to gain experience working in an archival institution. The current undergraduate student has begun diligently inventorying the collection this semester and has been a valuable resource and addition to the Driskell Center's Archives team. This gift offers a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to gain paid experience in the cultural history field and expands processing capabilities and efficiency at the Driskell Center’s Archives.

Read the full press release.

Image: Alonzo Davis, circa 1976. Courtesy of the Hayes-Benjamin Papers on African American Art and Artists at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gift of the Estate of Tritobia Hayes Benjamin. (MS06.08, T-45-8)