Alvia J. Wardlaw

1994 Inductee
Arts

Alvia J. Wardlaw, a teacher and curator nationally recognized in the classroom and showroom, is a leading expert on African-American art and history. Her photographs are exhibited throughout Texas.

In 1994 she was assistant professor of Art History at Texas Southern University, adjunct curator of African-American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and guest curator/research fellow at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

Ms. Wardlaw also served as the curator of the Barbara Jordan Archives and the Gallery of Traditional African Art at Texas Southern University. She was Associate Curator of Primitive Art and Education at the History of Fine Arts and served on the Advisory Board of the National Black Arts Festival.

Exhibitions to her credit include “Haiti and Belize: Photographs of Earlie Hudnell,” at Texas Southwestern University and Benteler-Morgan Galleries; “Black Art: Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art,” at the Dallas Museum of Art; “John Biggers: Bridges,” at the California Museum of African-American Life and Culture; “Homecoming: African-American Family History in Georgia,” for the African-American Family History Association; “Ceremonies and Visions: The Art of John Biggers,” at Laguna Gloria Art Museum; “Roy DeCarava: Photographs,” at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and “Photographs from the Wellesley College Connections,” at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

Besides writing numerous publications and publishing poetry in Black Scholar, a journal, Wardlaw acted as a moderator for “Research in African-American Folk Art” at the African-American Museums Association National Conference, and has lectured on “African-American Art and Postmodernism” at the Hirshorn Museum.

Among Wardlaw’s honors and awards are the Margaret Kawkins National Arts Award; Best Exhibition of 1990 for “Black Art; Ancestral Legacy,” by D Magazine; Fulbright Fellow, West Africa; Compton Danforth Fellow; Ford Foundation Fellow, New York University; Award of Merit, University of Texas at Austin; and recognition by the American Association for State and Local History for the exhibition “Homecoming: African-American Family History in Georgia.”