UNCF Receives Art of Renowned Artist Benny Andrews

Legacy Lives On at HBCUs

UNCF–the United Negro College Fund–the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization, today announced that the Benny Andrews Foundation selected UNCF to receive 128 pieces of his art collection and to assist with the exhibition of his art in the collections of UNCF’s historically black colleges and universities, African American museums, and other places where people come together to learn about culture and American life. The art donation includes his famous work “The Graduate” and “Young Artist”-Pictures for Miss Josie Series.

“UNCF is honored that the Benny Andrews Foundation selected UNCF to receive this precious gift,” said Michael L. Lomax, UNCF president and CEO. “The work of this accomplished and visionary artist has been exhibited in some of the world’s most important permanent collections. He will be remembered for generations, both for his art and for his generosity and belief in UNCF’s mission and education.”

Born in rural Georgia in 1930, Benny Andrews grew up picking cotton with his family, but his mother insisted that her family get the education they would need to get ahead, and Andrews graduated from Fort Valley State College, a Georgia HBCU and the world-famous Chicago Art Institute.

An artist, activist and educator, Andrews used his art to teach a new generation about the life he had lived in Georgia, about the jazz clubs and musicians that were enriching the culture and about the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. His paintings hang in major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York. He was director of visual arts for the National Endowment for the Arts and was instrumental in helping form the National Arts Program, the largest coordinated visual arts program in the nation’s history. Andrews died in Brooklyn, New York on November 10, 2006.

Experts including leadership and staff of the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, The Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLP and Nene Humphrey, Andrews’ widow, president of the Benny Andrews Foundation and accomplished artist in her own right will serve as partners to assist in the development of criteria for acceptance, protection and distribution of the collection as well as promotion and programmatic opportunities.