Dr. Alvia J. Wardlaw is an American art scholar, one of the country's top experts on African-American art. She is Curator and Director of the University Museum at Texas Southern University, an institution central to the development of art by African-Americans in Houston. She is a professor of Art History at Texas Southern University. She is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Council of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She co-founded the National Alliance of African and African American Art Support groups in 1998. Dr. Wardlaw was University of Texas at Austin's first African American PhD in Art History. She was formerly Curator of Modern and Contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 1995-2009, where she organized over seventy-five exhibitions on African and African American art. Wardlaw was adjunct curator of African-American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1994. Her exhibition, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, a collection of quilts by outstanding quilters from Alabama broke attendance records at major museums across the 11 cities it traveled to and was one of the most talked-about museum shows of 2002 in America and beyond. She has presented exhibitions which have added to the American art canon the work of with major, previously undercelebrated African-American artists, especially John Biggers, Thornton Dial and Kermit Oliver. Her own photographs were shown across Texas. She grew up and lives in Third Ward, Houston, Texas.
2008 Houston Collects: African American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Dr. Wardlaw has historicized John Biggers' art philosophy, based in large part on his travels to Africa and his celebration of the African American community, his legacy and impact on student artists who studied with him and his impact upon the modern art world. Alvia J. Wardlaw has mentored countless students of color to pursue careers in the museum field, ranging from curatorial to conservation positions.
Writing
Dominique de Menil asked her to write an essay for the groundbreaking “De Luxe Show;” August 22, 1971, pairing the works of notable white and black artists together.
The exhibition “Handcrafted,” an early show at the Studio Museum .
The Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room, Museum of Fine Arts, 1995.
Grant Hill, Something All Our Own: The Grant Hill Collection of African American Art,Duke University Press, 2004.
Notes from a Child's Odyssey: The Art of Kermit Oliver, Museum of Fine Arts, 2005.
Charles Alston, Pomegranate, 2007.
Also author of Black Art, Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African-American Art, as an accompaniment to the exhibition. Contributor of articles and poetry to various publications, including Black Scholar.
Collecting African American Art: the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 2009.
Awards
Fulbright Fellowship in West Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal in 1984
Fulbright Award for study in Tanzania, East Africa in 1997
Senior Fellow for the 2001 American Leadership Forum
Texas Southern University’s Research Scholar of the Year in 2009.
In addition, Black Art Ancestral Legacy was named Best Exhibition of 1990 by D Magazine, and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend received the International Association of Art Critics Award in 2003.
