Women in the Atlanta Annuals (1942-1970)

Scholarship by Dr. Tina Maria Dunkley makes visible the names of the 887 artists who exhibited during the 29-year run of the Annuals.

Nearly 250 of those artists were women.

We want to honor and celebrate Black women who persisted and created during times of ugliness and despair.

Our goal is to highlight the careers of each of these women by connecting archival findings to show how extensive this history is.

See Dunkley’s Compendium of artists on the CD included with the book: Tina Maria Dunkley and Jerry Cullum, In the Eye of the Muses: Selections from the Clark Atlanta University Art Collection (Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, 2012).

An obviously important resource is the archives of the Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library where many things are now digitized including this cover of the 29th Atlanta Art Exhibition Register, 1970.

Pamleet Ande exhibited in two Atlanta Annuals: 1948 & 1949.

Pamleet Ande is the pseudonym used by Edna Powell Gayle (1900-1984). Born in Kentucky, Gayle grew up in Chicago. She studied art under Archibald Motley, Jr. (1891-1981). He painted a portrait of her “Portrait of a Cultured Lady” (see image below), that you may have seen recently as it was included in both the Black American Portraits traveling exhibition and *The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism* show at the Met.

In the 1950s, Gayle and her husband ran a gallery in Chicago where Black artists could sell to Black patrons, many of whom were working people who were able to buy on installment plans.

Edna Powell Gayle passed away in San Bernardino, California in 1984.

We know the artist used her pseudonym from Roi Ottley, “Art Gallery Under Elevated Brightens 63rd Street Area,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, July 15, 1956. Vincent Lushington “Roi” Ottley (1906-1960) (see image below).

Gladys F. Barker exhibited in the 1945 Annual.

Born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago where she attended the Art Institute, she later married and settled in New Jersey. She is considered the “Mother of Newark Arts.”

A practicing artist for more than 60 years, “…opening Newark’s groundreaking art gallery Aard Studio Gallery on Bergen Street in 1971. It was a hub for black and brown artists who launched their careers with her help.” – Barry Carter, “Art was her life; her canvas: community,” The Star-Ledger [Newark, NJ], September 18, 2019, p. A15.

She exhibited at MoMA in 1986 “Progressions: A Cultural Legacy.”

In 2019, Gladys Barker Grauer was celebrated with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Women’s Caucus for Art.

Grauer’s Estate is overseen by Gallery Aferro. On the website there are many digitized artworks showing the span of her career.

Mary Alice Barnett exhibited 6 works across four Annuals in 1947, 1948, 1949 & 1950.

Born in Indianapolis, Mary Alice Barnett attended the John Herron Art School there, graduating in 1949.

Mary Alice Barnett married Harold L. Taylor and moved to Pennsylvania. Newspaper resources show her exhibiting in the Philadelphia region in the 1960s and the 1990s – in later years spelling her name Maryalice Taylor.

Maude C. Blackwood exhibited in the 1943 Annual.

Born in Virginia, Blackwood earned a BS and an MA at the Ohio State University. She taught art at the State Teachers College in Elizabeth City, NC until she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corp during WWII. Blackwood served from August 1943 to December 1944. She left the Women’s Army Corps prior to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion being deployed.

Blackwood designed the album cover art for “Harlem’s Poppin’” recorded by Maceo Pinkard. See article below that discusses this from 1940.

Kathryn Bertell exhibited in the 1947 Annual.

She was born in Chicago and graduated Lindblom High School in 1942.

So far, we have found very little record of her career.

We know she participated in the Young Chicago Art exhibition at the Art Institute in 1942. And we know she was teaching Industrial Arts in the Chicago Public Schools in the 1970s.

Shirley L. Bolton exhibited 15 works in eight Annuals. She exhibited every year from 1962 to 1970 (except 1965). In 1970, she was awarded second prize for her painting, “Tenement.”

Bolton earned an MFA and a PhD. She exhibited widely.

In 1977, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis, which soon devastated her physically and financially.

Dr. Bolton passed in 1984, aged 39.

Betty Ann Bryant exhibited in the 1951 Annual.

She went on to become an internationally revered jazz pianist and singer.

She is performing regularly in Southern California. For dates see her website www.bettybryant.com.

Eloise Carey Bishop exhibited in the 1946 Atlanta Annual – a sculpture “Head of a Young Man.”

She had shown a similarly titled piece at the Albany Institute of History and Art in 1945 – possibly the same work?

Eloise Carey Bishop grew up in Harlem, the daughter of the Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop and Eloise Carey Bishop, an educator. She attended the Harlem Community Art Center, where “she designed and made rugs.”^ Surely she must have been influenced by or worked with Augusta Savage and Sarah West.

Bishop was the first Black student to attend Bennington College, graduating in 1942.

“In July of 1943, she went to the 52nd Street studio of photographer and photojournalist Lotte Jacobi with her father and sister to have portraits taken. Shelton Hale Bishop had been an admirer of Jacobi’s portraits and was in sporadic correspondence with her throughout the 1940s.”^ We are keen to find this archival connection. The photo here of Bishop is one Jacobi took (signed lower left).

Bishop went on to teach, including at the King-Smith Studio School in Washington DC. She married Joaquin Fiorillo in 1945, and had two sons.

She continued to be a sculptor and textile designer.

Eloise Carey Bishop Fiorillo passed in 1962, aged 40.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL) holds a slim artist file on Bishop. It contains two short articles from the 1940s.

^[Dean] Oceana Wilson, “Eloise Carey Bishop, ‘42,” Bennington College, Crossett Library, 2023.