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(Photo by Samantha Willis)
The artwork of internationally renowned artist/educator and longstanding dean of VCU's School of Arts Murry DePillars is on exhibit at the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia in historic Jackson Ward through June 3. (Photo by Samantha Willis)
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He cultivated Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts into the powerhouse, top-ranked institution it is today, yet many in Richmond don't know who Murry DePillars was, nor the legacy he left behind. A new exhibition of his artwork at the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia aims to change that.
On display through June 3, 2017, "Murry DePillars: Double Vision" presents 37 of DePillars' paintings, drawings and sketches, spanning four decades and the length of his career. The collection is on loan from DePillars' wife of over 20 years, Mary DePillars, who spoke of her husband's dedication to his craft at an exhibition preview Feb. 1.
"He felt a great responsibility to tell our stories, and art was his medium to do that," she said.
DePillars was an artist, scholar and educator, and served as dean of VCU's art school from 1976 to 1995. "[DePillars] cultivated a fertile period of development at the School of the Arts, which nearly doubled enrollment, reaching 2,400 students and emerging as one of the largest arts schools in the country under his leadership," according to the school's website.
"I remember so many nights when his students were working late on projects," recalled Mary. "Murry would get up in the middle of the night and take them pizza, because he knew they hadn't eaten all day. That's the caliber of educator he was."
(Photo by Samantha Willis)
DePillars' wife, Mary, stands next to one of her favorite pieces in the collection, entitled "Lifting of the Plate" (2003). (Photo by Samantha Willis)
Born in Chicago in 1938, DePillars was a child of the Great Migration, the mass exodus from the South of approximately 6 million black Americans between 1910 and 1970; they were fleeing racially motivated violence and discrimination, and flocking toward opportunities for a better life in the North. DePillars' family moved to Chicago from Mississippi, but he never forgot his roots, as reflected in one of his best-known works, "From the Mississippi Delta" (1997). The painting is in the permanent collection at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Just as much an artist as an educator, DePillars continued painting while teaching and often traveled with a portable art studio: a briefcase containing his brushes, acrylic paints and other supplies. A series of the paintings born of his briefcase are displayed in the hallway on the second level of the Black History Museum.
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(Photo by Samantha Willis)
"The Briefcase Series" shows some of the paintings DePillars created while traveling. (Photo by Samantha Willis)
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DePillars often painted while traveling for lectures and teaching assignments, and completed a series of paintings in this manner. (Photo by Samantha Willis)
Richard Woodward, curator of African art at the VMFA and a BHMVA board member, curated the DePillars exhibition. He explained the complex nature of DePillars' style, which often contained intricate geometric patterns, vivid colors, and multiple layers of symbolic imagery. "There's a lot of detail, a lot of content in his works. He packed his art with subject matter. ... They take careful scrutiny to really appreciate."
In the lower level of the museum's exhibition space are several of DePillars' works that reimagine figures like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Remus, racially charged caricatures from a less enlightened period of American history. In the large-scale drawing "Aunt Jemima," DePillars elevates and empowers the pancake-box icon, whose image is widely regarded as a thinly veiled representation of the mammy figure of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. "Artists like Murry have an impact in the revision of stereotypes," said Woodward. In DePillars' drawing, Aunt Jemima bursts through the box, heedless of her usual place as its smiling mascot, bare-breasted, stern-faced and with her gloved fist raised. Woodward explained that the fist was sociopolitical commentary, DePillars' nod to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City where two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their own gloved fists in a Black Power salute.
(Photo by Samantha Willis)
DePillars' "Aunt Jemima," a large-scale drawing (Photo by Samantha Willis)
DePillars was also a member of AfriCOBRA (African Commune Of Bad Relevant Artists), a collective of black artists founded in Chicago in 1968. Having made his home in Richmond since 1971, DePillars passed away May 31, 2008.
The "Murry DePillars: Double Vision" exhibition is just one of multiple offerings from the BHMVA during Black History Month, including a concert by Binford Middle School orchestra and chorus students in celebration of black music on Thursday, Feb. 9, at 6:30, and a talk by pioneering black female mathematician Dr. Christine Darden, whose sonic boom research for NASA was recently revealed by the book and film "Hidden Figures," on Sunday, Feb. 26, at 3 pm. For more information, visit the museum's website.
