Image: Collage of H.J. Lewis cartoons created by Garland Martin Taylor

Sculptor and curator Garland Martin Taylor will be joining us for an evening lecture at OSU to share his research on Henry Jackson Lewis, a nineteenth-century African American political cartoonist. Born a slave, Lewis as a freeman became a self-taught artist whose landscape drawings and editorial cartoons regularly appeared in both white and black newspapers; he was the director of the art department at a black illustrated newspaper, the Indianapolis Freeman. Although some of Lewis’s drawings are now held at the Smithsonian Museum and the DuSable Museum in Chicago, key details about Lewis’s life and work remained unknown until recently.

Garland Martin Taylor sheds new light on Lewis’s life, his controversial drawings, and his historical importance as an African American visual artist in periodical culture. This event will appeal to audiences with interests in communication, cartoon history, art and art history, literacy studies, print culture, African American studies, and a range of other topics. This event is FREE and open to the public.

This program was made possible with the help of The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, University Libraries, The School of Communication, History of Art, African and African American Studies, and Literacy Studies.