Image: Claremont Museum of Art, Washington
At the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, ‘Samella! Black as Lacquer and Iron’ focuses on the extraordinary life and profound influence of Dr. Samella Lewis as an art historian, educator, philanthropist and artist.
Curated by Francine Farr, who studied with Lewis at Scripps College, the exhibition includes Lewis’s drawings and prints alongside works by Claude Lewis, Harmon Outlaw, Alison Saar and Howard Smith, among others.
The exhibition presents the “interrelationships” that Dr. Lewis spoke of and taught by juxtaposing Asian, African and Indigenous art with her early drawings and prints, as well as contemporary artworks by and from her students, protégés, colleagues, friends, admirers, gallerists and founded organizations.
It is also a heartfelt homage to Lewis as a Scripps College art history professor and an acknowledgment of her living legacy as a mentor, publisher, author, activist, innovator, organizer, gallerist, museologist and cultural ambassador, as well as a Fulbright fellow to Taiwan, wife, mother and “enlightened person.”
The exhibition is described as an elegy to Lewis and to a leadership style defined by quiet action, openness, humility, compassion, collaboration and transdisciplinarity, including an interpretation of sentience in the past and present arts of China, Japan, Buddhism, Pacific Islanders, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. ‘Samella! Black as Lacquer and Iron’ is on view from August 15 through November 15, 2026.
