Thelma Johnson Streat

Thelma Beatrice Johnson Streat (1912 – 1959)[1] was an African-American artist, dancer, and educator. She gained prominence in the 1940s for her art, performance and work to foster intercultural understanding and appreciation.

Thelma Johnson Streat
Born
Thelma Johnson

(1912-08-29)August 29, 1912
Yakima, Washington, U.S.
DiedMay 1959(1959-05-00) (aged 46)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationMuseum Art School in Portland
Known forPainting, Dance
Spouse(s)
  • Romaine Virgil Streat
    (
    m. 1935⁠–⁠1948)
  • John Edgar Kline
    (
    m. 1948)

Early life and education

Thelma Johnson was born August 29, 1912 in Yakima, a small agricultural town in Washington State, to artist James Johnson, and his wife Gertrude.[2][3] She was partially of Cherokee heritage.[4] Her family moved to Portland, Oregon when she was a young child.[4] In 1932, she graduated from Washington High School.[5] She studied art at the Museum Art School (now Pacific Northwest College of Art) in Portland from 1934 to 1935,[5][3] and took additional art courses at the University of Oregon from 1935 to 1936.[5]

Art work

The work of Thelma Johnson Streat is in my opinion one of the most interesting manifestations in this country at the present. It is extremely evolved and sophisticated enough to reconquer the grace and purity of African and American art.

— Diego Rivera, artist[6][7]

Streat was a multi-talented artist, seeking to express herself through many creative avenues, including oil and watercolor paintings, pen and ink drawings, charcoal sketches, mixed media murals, and textile design.

In 1938, Streat moved to San Francisco where she participated in Works Progress Administration projects. She was also included in exhibitions at the De Young Memorial Museum and San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).[8] In 1939 until 1940, Streat assisted artist Diego Rivera in the creation of the Pan American Unity mural, for the Art in Action exhibition at Treasure Island's Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE).[9] A portrait of Streat, just one of Rivera's many friends of depicted in the mural, can be seen at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) in the Diego Rivera Theatre located at CCSF's Ocean Campus.[10] The mural is currently undergoing restoration and will be featured in the SFMOMA's retrospective exhibition on Rivera in 2020.[11]

As Judy Bullington argues in her indispensable article on Streat, "the West Coast allowed highly visible indigenous traditions that generated a different kind of regional flavor from which modernists could draw inspiration. Streat’s ability to blend these multiple influences into a modernist mode enabled her to attract the attention of Hollywood arts collectors, to capture headlines across the United States, and, in the 1940s and 1950s, even to gain some international recognition."[12]

Her work was sometimes controversial. The Los Angeles Times reported that Streat was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan for her painting called "Death of a Negro Sailor," portraying an African-American sailor dying after risking his life abroad to protect the democratic rights he was denied at home.[13] The threat only made Streat believe that a program showing not only the Negro's tribulations but also the Negro's contributions to the nation's wealth was needed, so she initiated a visual education program called "The Negro in History."

Through a series of murals depicting the contributions of people of African descent, panels showed black Americans in industry, agriculture, medicine, science, meat packing, and transportation. There was even a panel on the contributions of black women.[6][14]

Streat's work often portrayed important figures in history. Along with images of well-known Americans like Frank Lloyd Wright, she painted a series of portraits of famous people of African ancestry, including concert singer Marian Anderson, singer/actor/activist Paul Robeson, Toussaint L'Overture, and Harriet Tubman, and more. As a pioneer in modern African American art, her work influenced and was influenced by Jacob Lawrence, Sargent Johnson, Romare Bearden, William H. Johnson, and the other artistic leaders of her time.[15] Her ability to integrate dance, song and folklore from a variety of cultures into a presentation package and utilize it to educate and inspire an appreciation across ethnic lines was revolutionary for her time.[7]

Collections

Her most well-known painting, Rabbit Man, was purchased by Alfred Barr for MoMA in 1942.[16] Streat was the first African-American woman to have a painting included in MoMA's permanent collection.[17] Streat's work was added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian when they purchased the mural Medicine and Transportation in 2016, which resides in the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C.[18][19][2] Streat painted Medicine and Transportation between 1942 and 1944, which features the contributions of African-Americans at work in a laboratory and industrial settings.[20]

The Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California also possesses a children's book illustration by Streat titled Robot.[21]

People who have owned Streat's work include actor Vincent Price, singer Roland Hayes, artist Diego Rivera, actress Fanny Brice, dancer Katherine Dunham, and actress Paulette Goddard.[7][14]

Select exhibitions

Her paintings have appeared in exhibits at museums and galleries including:

Dancer, singer, and folklorist

Similar to her contemporary and acquaintance Katherine Dunham, Streat traveled to Haiti between 1946 and 1951 to study dance, which she saw as an important inspiration of social change and a catalyst for challenging societal norms.[12] She also visited Mexico and Canada. Streat debuted her new choreography, inspired by her travels, in a performance at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1946, which combined African, Haitian, Hawaiian, Native American, Portuguese and other indigenous dance forms.[12]

Streat realized that prejudice and bigotry are learned, usually during childhood. In order to combat the development of bigotry, throughout the 1940s and 50s, Streat performed dances, songs, and folk tales from many cultures to thousands of children across Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United States in an effort to introduce them to the beauty and value of all cultures.

Teacher and activist

Between 1948 and 1950 Streat moved to Hawaii with her second husband Edgar Kline and they founded Children's City fo Hawaii and New School of Expression in Punaluu, Oahu to introduce children to art and to the value of cultural diversity.[12]

Honors and accomplishments
  • Gained national recognition at age 18, when her painting titled "A Priest" won honorable mention at the Harmon Foundation exhibit in New York City (1929).[7]
  • First African-American woman to have a painting exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York (1942).[26]
  • Headed the Children's Education Project to introduce American kids to the contributions of African Americans through a series of colorful murals.[14]
  • Was threatened by the KKK for exhibiting a painting honoring a Black American sailor's sacrifice.[27]
  • Performed a dance recital at Buckingham Palace for the King and Queen of England (1950).[28]
  • First American woman to have her own television program in Paris (1949).[28]
  • Worked with Mexican muralist Diego Rivera on his Pan American Unity mural in San Francisco in 1939.[6][7][29]
  • By 1947, one of only four African American abstract painters to have had solo shows in New York City. The other three were Romare Bearden, Rose Piper, and Norman Lewis.[30]
gollark: So what?!?!??!?!?!?!
gollark: Dimensional Doors?
gollark: Integrated Dynamics?
gollark: ME Capability Adapter?
gollark: Do you have advanced rocketry *and* galacticraft?

See also

References
  1. "Thelma Johnson Streat (1912-1959)". Oregon Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2020-03-05.
  2. Young, Arashi. "Thelma Johnson Streat Mural Finds a Permanent Home in Smithsonian". The Skanner News. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  3. Allen, Ginny. "Thelma Johnson Streat (1912-1959)". The Oregon Encyclopedia. Portland State University and the Oregon Historical Society. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  4. Muir, Pat (2016-02-14). "Project aims to educate public about forgotten trailblazer, born in Yakima". Yakima Herald-Republic. Retrieved 2020-03-05.
  5. "Thelma Johnson Streat: Faith in an Ultimate Freedom". Tyler Fine Art. Retrieved 2019-02-27 – via Issuu.
  6. Luray, Elyse. "Investigation: WPA Mural Studies". Season 7, Episode 9. PBS History Detectives.
  7. Bullington, Judy (Summer 2005). "New Perspective: Thelma Johnson Streat and Cultural Synthesis on the West Coast". American Art. Smithsonian Institution. 19 (2): 92–107. doi:10.1086/444483.
  8. "Thelma Johnson Streat (1912-1959)". oregonencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  9. "Pan American Unity". WikiArt. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
  10. Zakheim, Masha. "Pan-American Unity, Historical Essay". FoundSF. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
  11. "Pan American Unity at SFMOMA | Diego Rivera Mural Project". riveramural.org. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  12. Bullington, Judy (2005-06-01). "Thelma Johnson Streat and Cultural Synthesis on the West Coast". American Art. 19 (2): 92–107. doi:10.1086/444483. ISSN 1073-9300.
  13. "Painter's Death Of A Black Sailor Attracts Attention". The Black Dispatch. December 4, 1943.
  14. Jones, Catherine (August 15, 1945). "Freedom for Negroes Linked With the Arts". The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon.
  15. Patton, Sharon F. (1998). African American Art. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 161.
  16. "Thelma Johnson Streat. Rabbit Man. 1941". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  17. "Thelma Johnson Streat, Artists". Modernism in the New City: Chicago Artists, 1920-1950. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  18. Cederholm, Theresa Dickason, ed. (1973). Afro-American Artists: A Bio-Bibliographical Directory. Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library. p. 270.
  19. Igoe, Lynn Moody (1981). 250 Years of Afro-American Art. New York: R.R. Bowker Company. p. 1127.
  20. "Medicine and Transportation". National Museum of African American History and Culture. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  21. Mills College Art Museum. ""Robot" Illustration For Children's Book by Thelma Johnson Streat".
  22. "New Acquisitions: American Painting and Sculpture". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  23. Potter, Berit (June 2017). "Grace McCann Morley: Defending and Diversifying Modern Art · SFMOMA". www.sfmoma.org. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  24. "Visual Art and the American Experience". National Museum of African American History and Culture. 2016-09-16. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  25. "Visual Art and the American Experience at the African American Museum of History and Culture". DAILY SERVING. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  26. The Guerrilla Girls (1998). Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. The Guerrilla Girls.
  27. "KKK Threatens Woman Painter". The Pittsburgh Courier, national edition. December 4, 1943.
  28. "Thema (sic) Streat At The Curran Starting Feb. 26". The Daily Recorder. Sacramento, California. February 13, 1953.
  29. Wysinger, Lena M. (September 15, 1940). "News of Activities of Negroes". The Oakland Tribune. Oakland, California.
  30. Patton, Sharon F. (1998). African American Art. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 161.

Further reading

Books
  • Falk, Peter Hastings, ed. (1985). Who Was Who In American Art, 1898-1947. Connecticut: Sound View Press. p. 602.
  • Dictionary Catalog of the Dance Collection. Volume 9. The New York Public Library. 1974. p. 6129.
  • Museum of Modern Art: Library Inventory List, Part iv. (S-Z). 1984. p. 318.
  • Gibson, Ann Eden (1999). Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics. Yale University Press.
  • Allen, Ginny; Klevit, Jody (1999). Oregon Painters: The First Hundred Years, 1859-1959. Oregon Historical Society.
  • Reference Library of Black America. Volume 4. New York University. 1971. p. 93.
  • Ploski, Harry A.; Williams, James, eds. The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the African-American. The Black Artist. p. 1076.
  • Ebony (1966). The Negro Handbook. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co. p. 355.

Periodicals
  • Smith, Roberta (June 28, 1991). "Review/Art; 'African-American Abstraction,' an Exploration". The New York Times.
  • Jones, Aaron (May 1998). "Treasures from Reed's Collection". Reed College Magazine. Reed College, Portland.
  • "Obituary—Mrs. John Edgar". Oregon Journal. May 14, 1959. p. 11.
  • "Obituary—Famed Painter-Dancer Dies After Heart Attack". The Oregonian. May 24, 1959.
  • "Famed Painter-Dancer is Eulogized in Los Angeles". Baltimore Afro-American. June 6, 1959. p. 15
  • "Couple from Hawaii Show Folklore Paintings, Curios". Bellingham Herald. May 16, 1958.
  • "Hills Folklore Collected By Husband-Wife Team". Daily Journal. Rapid City, S.D. June 18, 1958.
  • "Visiting Hawaii Child Welfare Leaders See Folklore as Link for All Children". Sioux City Sentinel. September 18, 1958. A-3.
  • "The Londoner's Diary: Two Yellow Moons". Evening Standard. UK. March 7, 1950.
  • "The News That's Going Around". The Irish Press. Ireland. May 6, 1950.
  • "Art and Artists: Thelma Johnson Streat at S.F. Museum of Art". Oakland Tribune. March 17, 1946.

Artifacts
  • Letter to Marian Anderson (dated Dec. 19, 1938). Special Collections (Marian Anderson archives), Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania.
  • Photographs, personal applications and letters of reference. The Harmon Collection (The Harmon Foundation). National Archives.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.