Conflicting Interpretations in the Biography of a Modern Artist of African Descent

Between the 1920s and the 1950s the Harmon Foundation supported the work of African American modern artists through exhibitions and sales designed to make their work better known, offering prizes for the best work (Mary Beattie Brady, “An Experiment in Inductive Service. Opportunity 9 (1931): 142–4; Harmon Foundation, Materials on Negro Achievement in Art, (New York: Harmon Foundation, n.d.). Between the 1950s and 1967 the foundation collected information on African contemporary art and artists, exhibiting and arranging to sell their work in the United States. Evelyn S. Brown, Africa’s Contemporary Art and Artist (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1966).

Simon Ottenberg, Olayinka: A Woman’s View. The Life of an African Modern Artist (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2013).

Evelyn S. Brown to Miranda Burney-Nicol, letter, November 10, 1960.

Miranda Burney-Nicol to Evelyn S. Brown, letter, November 23, 1960.

According to the art historian Rowland Abiodun, Ogunjami is a Yoruba word literally meaning “Ogun (the Yoruba God of Iron) fought me.” Abiodun believes the term to be a contraction of Ogunjami, meaning “Ogun fights on my behalf.”

Harmon Foundation, Negro Artists: An Illustrated Review of their Achievements (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1935; reprinted, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971); Harmon Foundation, Exhibition of Fine Arts: Productions of American Negro Artists (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1928).

Suzanna Ogunjami, Interview, interviewer not stated, Harmon Foundation Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, ca. 1934, six handwritten pages. From the seventeenth to the early twentieth century “Ebo” was the common name in the Western world for a people later known as “Ibo,” and now sometimes called “Igbo,” the largest cultural group in southeastern Nigeria. See Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976); Herbert M. Cole and Chike Aniakor, eds., Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos (Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1984); Toyin Falola, ed., Igbo History and Society: The Essays of Adiele Afigbo (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press 2005); Toyin Falola, ed., Igbo Religion and Social Life and Other Essay by Simon Ottenberg (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006); Toyin Falola, ed., Igbo Art and Culture and Other Essays by Simon Ottenberg (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006).

Suzanna Ogunjami, Interview with Madame Suzanne [sic] Ogunjami—Negro Artist, Harmon Foundation Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, 1934, three typed pages.

Although the British kept competent records of those entering their colony of Jamaica, unfortunately I do not know the African names of the couple, and so I cannot trace whether they came to Jamaica.

Mr. Wilson was a Krio from Freetown, Sierra Leone. The British-oriented Krio generally adopted on African name, often from the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria, even though they may not have had Yoruba ancestry.

M. N. Wilson. Interview with the Rev. Mr. Wilson (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1934), handwritten.

M. N. Wilson, Interview with the Rev. Mr. Wilson (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1934), typewritten.

Leo Spitzer, The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974); Akintola J. G. Wyse, The Krio of Serra Leone: An Interpretive History (London: Hurst, 1989).

Ogunjami, Interview, ca. 1934, 1.

Ibid.

Ogunjami, Interview with Madame Suzanne [sic] Ogunjami, 2–3.

Harmon Foundation, Negro Artists, 3–5.

Susanna Ogunjami, Résumé (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1937), unpublished.

Harmon Foundation, Exhibition of Fine Arts; Harmon Foundation, Negro Artists; Richard J. Powell and Jack Reynolds, To Conserve a Legacy American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (New York: Studio Museum, 1999).

Andrea D. Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” in Powell and Reynolds, To Conserve a Legacy, 217–8; Harmon Foundation, Exhibition of Fine Arts, 6. The only modern African artist who might have exhibited in the United States at such an early date was the Nigerian, Aina Onabolu. There is no indication that he did so, confirmed in an email of January 2009 from the African art historian Chika Okeke-Agulu. In the 1920s and 1930s Onabolu was in art training in England, briefly in France, and was establishing art education in the Lagos schools. There is no record that he had contact with the Harmon Foundation in that period. In 1950, sponsored by the Harmon Foundation and the British Information Service, he exhibited at Howard University and at a number of other eastern United States’ locations. Sylvester O. Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Makings of an African Modernist (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 105–106.

Gary A. Reynolds, Beryl J. Wright, David C. Driskell, Gibbes Museum of Art, Newark Museum, and Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation (Newark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1989), 288; New Jersey State Museum, Activities and Exhibitions 1929–1939 (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Museum, n.d.);. Harmon Foundation, Negro Arists, 16–17, 53. Harmon Foundation, papers, small printed ten-line biography of Suzanna Ogunjami, with the penciled note: “Harmon Traveling Exhibits, Aug 5, 1936,” Ogunjami file, Harmon Foundation, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

Harmon Foundation, papers, “Harmon Traveling Exhibits, Aug 5, 1936.”

Evelyn S. Brown to Suzanna Wilson, letter, April 13, 1937.

Joseph Scanlon, ed., A History of the Renaissance Society: The First Seventy Five Years (Chicago: Renaissance Society 1993), 14. Among the sixteen African-American artists in the exhibition were Richmond Barthé, William H. Johnson, Malvin Grey Johnson, Archibald J. Motley Jr., and Hale Woodruff. Ogunjami was in excellent company.

The Topeka Daily Capital, March 14, 1937 stated: “The Exhibition of Negro Art at Mulvane Museum has received favorable comment regarding both the work of the Kansas Vocational school and the collection of oil paintings from the Harmon Foundation.”

Harmon Foundation, Art from Africa in Our Time. Paintings, Sculpture, Ceramics, School Childcare’s Art-crafts, from the Collection Sent to the Harmon Foundation: Exhibition at the Phelps-Stokes Fund, New York, December 18, 1961—January 19, 1962 (New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1961).

Harmon Foundation, African Artists of Our Time (New York: Harmon Foundation, 1966), one page announcement.

Powell and Reynolds, To Conserve a Legacy, 98, 212–7.

Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” 217.

Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” 218n1.

Delphic Studios, An Exhibition of Paintings by Suzanna Ogunjami (New York: Delphic Studios 1934).

A premier New York City department store at the time.

Ogunjami, Interview, ca. 1934, 3.

Delphic Studios, An Exhibition of Paintings by Suzanna Ogunjami.

Ibid.

Suzanna Wilson to Evelyn S. Brown, letter, February 14, 1938.

Alma M. Reed, Peregrina: Love and Death in Mexico, ed. Michael K. Schuessler (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), x–xi; Antionette May, Passionate Pilgrim: The Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed (New York: Paragon House, 1993), 227–47.

Evelyn S. Brown to Miranda Burney-Nicol, letter, November 10, 1960.

Evelyn S. Brown was the film’s director, Jules V. D. Bucher was director of photography. Allen was a well-known photographer of African American society figures. The film and its outtakes are in the U.S. National Archives, Moving Film Section, College Park, Maryland. The film, but not the outtakes, is available on the Web at http://www.archive.org/details/study_of_negro_artists.

Reynolds et al., Against the Odds, 104.

Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” 218. There are nine outtakes in reel 6, with the images relating to Ogunjami in outtakes 4, 5, 8, and 9. Each outtake includes a hodgepodge of images, most of which have nothing to do with Ogunjami.

John Picton and John Mack, African Textiles (London: British Museum, 1989), 135; Venice Lamb and Judy Holmes, Nigerian Weaving (Roxford, England: H. A. & V. M. Lamb, 1980), 170–264; Lena Bjerregaard, Techniques of Guatemalan Weaving (New York: Van Nostrand, 1977); Judy Ziek de Rodriquez and Nona Ziek, Weaving on a Backstrap Loom (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978).

Copies of photographs of Ogunjami’s art and of her and her husband, and Ogunjami’s marriage license, the relevant portions of the 1920 U.S. Census, and what both Ogunjami and her husband wrote about themselves for the Harmon Foundation, are available at the Harriet Tubman Institute archives, York University, Ontario, Canada.

Brown, Africa’s Contemporary Art and Artists, 10.

Harmon Foundation, Negro Artists, 34, 53.

“Artist from Nigeria Shows Art,” Art Digest 1 (1934): 23.

Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” 217–8.

Howard Devree, “A Round of Galleries: Current Shows,” New York Times, December 9, 1934, sec. 10, p. 8.

Topeka Capital Times, March 14, 1937, 13B.

Christine Temin, “Forever Free: A Remarkable Exhibit Tells the Story of an African-American Legacy of Art,” Boston Globe, October 31, 1999, section N. I. .; Powell and Reynolds, To Conserve a Legacy.

Freida High, “An Interwoven Framework of Art History and Black Feminism: Framing Nigeria,” in Contemporary Textures: Multidimensionality in Nigerian Art, ed. Nikru Nzegwu (Binghamton, NY: International Society for the Study of Africa, Binghamton University, 1999), 195.

Ibid., 193.

Mary Beatie to Alain Locke, January 15, 1935. At least two copies of the letter exist. One is in Locke’s files at the Howard University Archives, were there is also a black and white reproduction of Ogunjami’s Full Blown Magnolia. The other copy is in the Brady’s file in the Harmon Foundation, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. By 1929, Locke had made contact with Brady and the Harmon Foundation, and apparently served as an informal advisory to it. Jeffery C. Stewart, ed., The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture (New York: Garland, 1983), 159, 178; Alain Locke, “The American Negro as Artist,” in Stewart, The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, 210–20; Rose Henderson, “Negro Artists in the Fifth Harmon Exhibition,” Southern Workman 62 (1933): 175–81.

Linda Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 86.

Ogunjami wrote: “I have been helping Mr. Wilson in the Episcopal church work right along.” Ogunjami, Interview with Madam Suzanne [sic] Ogunjami, 3.

Ulli Beier, Thirty Years of Oshogbo Art (Bayreuth, Germany: Iwalawa-Haus, 1991); Frank McEwen, “Shona Art Today,” African Arts 5, no. 4 (1971): 8–11; Jeremy Coote, “Making Makonde Carving: The Origin and Development of New African Art Tradition, in Wooden Sculpture from East Africa from the Molde Collection, ed. Oxford Museum of Modern Art (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1989), 13–22. Anthony J. Stout, Modern Makonde Sculpture (Nairobi, Kenya: Kribo Gallery Publications, ca. 1966); Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, Contemporary African Art since 1980 (Bologna, Italy: Damiani, ca. 2009).

Ogunjami, Interview, ca. 1934, 2–3.

Ogunjami, Interview with Madam Suzanne [sic] Ogunjami, 2.

Ogunjami, Interview, ca. 1934, 3–4.

Ibid., 5–6.

S. Wilson, “The Arts and Handicrafts of West Africa: Their Social, Economic and Aesthetic Importance” (master’s thesis, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1928).

Archives, Episcopal Diocese of New York, New York City.

“Chapel of the Messiah,” The New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society, Eighty-Eighth Annual Report (1919): 11.

S. Wilson, “The Chapel of the Messiah.” (1920): 31, 5. The Chapel had a “colored congregation” and has “done much for African students and others in New York.” “Chapel of the Messiah,” The Mission News (1923): 26. This was still the era of racial segregation. M. Norman Wilson, “The Chapel of the Messiah,” The Mission News 30, no. 4 (1919): 398–399; “Chapel of the Messiah,” The New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society, Eighty-Eighth Annual Report (1919): 11.

M. Wilson, “Chapel of the Messiah,” Mission News (1919): 398–9.

Ibid., 11.

“Horizon,” Mission News (1920): 241.

M. Wilson, “Chapel of the Messiah,” 399. He wrote other articles on the Chapel with the same title: M. Norman Wilson, “The Chapel of the Messiah,” The Mission News 32, no 1 (1921): 10–11, and there are two unsigned articles with the title: “Chapel of the Messiah,” 1922 and 1923.

S. Wilson, “The Chapel of the Messiah,” The Mission News (1920): 20–21.

“Passing of the Chapel of the Messiah,” The Mission News 37, no, 1 (1926): 7 in the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, New York City, entitled “Church of the Messiah Burned,” stating that “Fr. Wilson lived in the church building and suffered the loss of his belongings.”

Letter from M. N. Ogunjami Wilson to the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, October 30, 1933. Typed copy of a letter to R. M. Pott, New York City, from an unsigned sender. Both letters in the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, New York City.

Various papers in the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, New York City, under the file “New Rochelle St. Simon’s Mission, 1927–1936.”

Ogunjami, Interview, ca. 1934, 3.

U.S.Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930 Population Schedule (New York, New York, Enumeration District 31—1003 Supervisor’s District 24, Sheets 20A and 20B). I thank art historian Professor Steven Nelson, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who read a draft of this manuscript and suggested that I check the 1930 U.S. Census for Suzanna Ogunjami or Suzanna Wilson.

Bowen and Ogunjami apparently overlapped in time at Columbia University. For his career, see Pelican Annual (University of the West Indies, 1955): 151.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States 1920, Population (New York, New York; Supervisors District 1, Enumeration District 1173, Ward of City 16A, Page 10B).

Wilson arrived in the United States in 1910, according to the 1920 U.S Census, and the List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States: S.S. Philadelphia, sailing from Southampton. Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, New York City (October 8, 1910).

State of New York, The City of New York, Department of Health, Certificate and Record of Marriage No. 13513, June 19, 1915.

Email from Maureen Warner-Lewis to Ottenberg, August 29, 2009.

Harmon Foundation, Exhibition of Fine Arts.

David Boxer, Jamaican Art, 1922–1982 (Kingston, Jamaica: The Service, 1982), 3–13; Wayne Brown, Edna Manley: The Private Years (London: Deutsch, 1975), 166, 196; National Gallery of Jamaica, Five Centuries of Art in Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: National Gallery of Jamaica, 1978); National Gallery of Jamaica, The Formative Years, 1922–1940 (Kingston, Jamaica: National Gallery of Jamaica, 1978).

Brown, Edna Manley.

“Artist from Nigeria Shows Art,” Art Digest 1 (1934): 23.

M. N. Ogunjami Wilson to Bishop Gilbert, letter, September 8, 1934.

The details of his church activities in West Africa are to be found in Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 1951–1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). His work took him to Bathurst (now Banjul) in The Gambia in 1941–45. It is not clear whether Ogunjami went there with him, but it is likely, given her devotion to church work.

S. Wilson, Prospectus: The West African Normal and Industrial Institute, two leaves, Freetown, 1935; also see Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” 218; Jacqueline M, Moore, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois and the Struggle for Racial Uplift (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003), 20–21.

Moore, Booker T. Washington.

Thomas Jesse Jones, Education in Africa: A Study of West, South, Equatorial Africa by the African Education Commission under the auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and Foreign Mission Societies of North America and Europe (New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1922).

Moore, Booker T. Washington, 21, 61–62, 71–72. His American educational approach was criticized by W. E. B. Dubois and other African Americans for setting too low educational goals, as it was undoubtedly viewed by educators in Sierra Leone, more used to a British model. Also see August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963), 95, 196, 199.

S. Wilson, Prospectus.

Ottenberg, Olayinka, ch. 3.

Barnwell, “Suzanna Ogunjami,” 218.

Suzanna Wilson to Evelyn S. Brown, February 14, 1938.

Ogunjami, Résumé.

Ogunjami was apparently unaware that this honor belongs to the Nigerian artist Aina Onabolu in Lagos in 1920.

Suzanna Wilson to Mary Beattie Brady, March 21, 1936.

Ottenberg, Olyakinka.

Miranda Burney-Nicol to Evelyn S. Brown, November 23, 1960.

Eddie Davies to Evelyn S. Brown, November 15, 1960.

Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 1426.

Email, Joe Opala to Simon Ottenberg, July 2, 2008.

The paucity of the biographical record on Suzanna Ogunjami or Suzanna Wilson, and the scarcity of her art reported on in this article should not be attributed to a lack of effort on the author’s part. I checked with most African-American colleges and universities east of the Mississippi and several west of it that had a museum, and only the Hampton University Museum had a painting of hers. The library at Howard University, as well as its Museum had none of her art. Responses were negative from the Studio Museum in Harlem, the DuSable Museum in Chicago and the New Jersey State Museum. In Washington, DC, the National Museum of African Art, the Anacosta Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, nor the National Museum of Women in the Arts had none of her work. At the Schomburg Library branch of the New York Public Library, I was unable to gain access to Ogunjami’s transcript at Teachers College because only a relative can do so, and I could not locate one.