An American Odyssey

by Mary Schmidt Campbell

2018 · Oxford University Press

By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America. As Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us in this definitive, defining, and immersive biography, the relationship between art and race was central to his life and work -- a constant, driving creative tension. Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years, but in the later 1930s turned to painting and became part of a community of artists supported by the WPA. As his reputation grew he perfected his skills, studying the European masters and analyzing and breaking down their techniques, finding new ways of applying them to the America he knew, one in which the struggle for civil rights became all-absorbing. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, he had begun to experiment with the Projections, as he called his major collages, in which he tried to capture the full spectrum of the black experience, from the grind of daily life to broader visions and aspirations. Campbell's book offers a full and vibrant account of Bearden's life -- his years in Harlem (his studio was above the Apollo theater), to his travels and commissions, along with illuminating analysis of his work and artistic career. Campbell, who met Bearden in the 1970s, was among the first to compile a catalogue of his works. An American Odyssey goes far beyond that, offering a living portrait of an artist and the impact he made upon the world he sought both to recreate and celebrate.

College of Saint Elizabeth

by Mary Ellen Gleason, Carol-Marie Kiernan, George Sirgiovanni

1999 · Arcadia Publishing

The College of Saint Elizabeth is the first permanent four-year liberal arts college for women ever established in New Jersey. In over two hundred photographs, many of them published here for the first time, we can follow the story of the first hundred years of this Catholic institution, founded in 1899 by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth. Today the founding organization continues to sponsor and participate in the growth and development of the college. As we look back with them over their first century, we can see the progress achieved through dedication to women's education and the full participation of women in society. The establishment of graduate departments in education, health care, theology, and management has helped establish Saint Elizabeth as a strong, growing community of learning in the Catholic liberal arts tradition.