Of Beginnings
It is said that good things come in pairs. The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is proving this expression to be true. The late artists and educators, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and Hale Woodruff are being given their deserved time to shine. Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Propohet and the Academy, an exhibition designed to both illuminate and re-introduce the works of Prophet and Woodruff, serves also as the 10th anniversary celebration for the SCMoFA as well as the 75th anniversary of Hale Woodruff’s work with the Atlanta University Center. Ms. Prophet, the first African American female graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and Mr. Woodruff, the founder of the AUC art department, epitomized the struggle that many artists found in their pursuit of happiness. Particularly artists of color.
Although born ten years apart, Prophet and Woodruff traveled parallel paths. Both excelled at the visual arts at an early age, thus taking them to Paris in search of further education and creative freedom; kindred spirits in the midst of the madness that was Modernism and the rush to create the “Great American Painting.” The excellence that they exhibited eventually led them to the AUC--Mr. Woodruff in 1931, and Ms. Prophet in 1934, as the founder of the sculpture program.
More than an anniversary celebration, Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and the Academy is also an outgrowth of conservation efforts to salvage works by Woodruff and present the 9 known remaining works of Ms. Prophet to the educational communities that they so willingly gave themselves to.
Hale Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and the Academy, on display at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, opens January 18 and closes May 12, 2007. Anne Collins Smith, Curator of Collections, has the full scoop: annesmith at spelman dot edu.