The Importance of Safe Space in Black Cultural Production: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, 1960s-1970s 

Crystal Nelson is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Colorado Boulder whose research and teaching focuses on Black art and Black visual culture(s) as articulated through painting, photography, film/video, and performance. They are a 2025 recipient of Rose Library’s African American History and Culture Visiting Researcher Fellowship.

I have recently begun research on my second book project, The Importance of Safe Space in Black Cultural Production: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, 1960s-1970s. It’s a comprehensive historical study of the network of Black-owned galleries operating during the civil rights and Black Power movements. In my study, I treat Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York as a cohesive arts ecosystem that provides care and safety to participants. I am particularly interested in the ways Black gallerists and artists collaborated to establish safe space where they could experiment with exhibition making and develop novel artistic practices. My project shows that minoritarian artists and cultural producers, historically excluded from the mainstream contemporary art world, harnessed their creative energies to establish safe space for artistic production, consciousness raising, and political empowerment. Black-run art spaces contributed significantly to worldbuilding for Back cultural producers and were needed during a period when the mainstream contemporary art world actively neglected Black artists. I ask: How did the civil rights movement, Watts rebellion, and the Black Power movement impact the development of these arts organizations? How did they foster the creation of safe spaces in which Black artists and cultural producers were able to establish themselves as thinkers and makers? 

Through preliminary research, I identified several organizations and key figures who were integral to the growth of the Black arts ecosystem of then 1960s and 1970s. Among them is Dr. Samella Lewis (1923-2022). Born on February 27, 1923 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Lewis grew up with a keen understanding of the importance of artistic and creative expression to the Black community and struggle. Widely considered the godmother of African American art, Lewis earned her BA in art history from the Hampton Institute (University) in 1945. In 1951, she became the first African American woman to be awarded a PhD in art and art history, which she earned from Ohio State University. From 1969 to 1971, she collaborated with artist Ruth G. Waddy on writing Black Artists on Art, for which Lewis founded Contemporary Crafts to publish the two-volume reference book. She is the single author of Art: African American (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), the first textbook on Black art. It was later revised, expanded, and retitled African American Art and Artists in the subsequent four editions. As the founder of several art spaces specializing in the exhibition of Black art, including the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles, which she founded in 1976, Lewis is a singular figure in the history of Black cultural production.  

I was fortunate enough to be awarded the Stuart A. Rose Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library African American Art and Culture Fellowship which allowed me to conduct archival research in the Samella Lewis Collection, a rich repository of documents and photographs that not only document Lewis’s life and career in the arts but also provide insight into the larger Black arts ecosystem. Her influence on the growth of the Black cultural production in the United States and abroad is undeniable. As an anchoring figure in the art world, Lewis demonstrated an unmatched commitment to the advancement of her fellow artists careers. She is the epitome of project’s central argument about safe space and Black cultural production. Lewis’s collection at the Stuart A. Rose Library proved to be indispensable to my project. Although I am in the nascent stages of research, mining her papers has brought to my attention aspects of the Black arts ecosystem I had yet to consider. For example, there were figures whose contributions to the histories of Black cultural production that have gone unsung. Samella Lewis’s papers revealed the roles of her lesser-known colleagues, however cursorily her archive unveiled this information. Furthermore, the Samella Lewis Collection underscores the fact that the Black arts ecosystem of the 1960s and 1970s was internationally oriented, with particular emphasis on the Caribbean and West Africa. The Black Atlantic was and continues to be fertile ground for Black artists working in this conceptual and geographic space. I was thrilled to learn about how intimately Black artists from across the nation and diaspora worked together to establish a supportive network in the face of active exclusion from the mainstream contemporary art world.