Image: Claremont Lewis Museum of Art, Claremont, Long Beach
The Claremont Lewis Museum of Art will open 'Samella! Black as Lacquer and Iron' on August 15, 2026, presenting an exhibition devoted to the life and influence of Dr. Samella Lewis, the art historian, educator, philanthropist and artist. The show will remain on view through November 15, 2026 at the museum’s historic Claremont Depot location in Claremont, California.
According to the museum, the exhibition is curated by Francine Farr, a former Scripps student of Lewis. It is framed as a study of Lewis’s “extraordinary life and profound influence,” and it brings together works by Lewis alongside pieces by Claude Lewis, Harmon Outlaw, Alison Saar, Howard Smith and others. The museum’s materials also note that the exhibition will include drawings and prints by Samella Lewis.
Lewis, who lived from 1923 to 2022, is described by the museum as a seminal figure in 20th-century American art and a trailblazing art history professor at Scripps College. The museum says she was considered the first American woman polymath of African descent to receive a PhD in the history of art. The exhibition text emphasizes the range of her work and the breadth of her legacy across African American, African, Asian, Asian American, Austronesian and Indigenous visual cultures.
The exhibition page presents 'Samella! Black as Lacquer and Iron' as a reflection of the “interrelationships” Lewis spoke of and taught, including juxtapositions of Asian, African and Indigenous art with her early drawings and prints. It also includes contemporary artworks by students, protégés, colleagues, friends, admirers, gallerists and organizations founded by Lewis. Among the artists and makers named in the exhibition materials are Alison Saar, Howard Smith, Richard Petterson, Louis Stern, Claude Lewis, Harmon Outlaw, filmmaker Alile Sharon Larkin and portrait quiltmaker Alita Aldridge.
The museum’s website positions the exhibition as both homage and memorial, describing it as an elegy to Lewis’s leadership style and a recognition of her roles as mentor, publisher, author, activist, innovator, organizer, gallerist, museologist, cultural ambassador, Fulbright fellow to Taiwan, wife and mother. The text also highlights her tenure at Scripps College, where she became the first tenured African American professor in 1969 and retired in 1984.
The museum says the exhibition is sponsored by Gould Asset Management LLC, with additional support from Dana and Kirk Delman and Suzanne Muchnic. An opening reception is scheduled for Saturday, August 15, from 5 to 8 p.m., with a member preview from 4 to 5 p.m. The museum also lists Art Walks for September 5, October 3 and November 7, all from 5 to 8 p.m., while the exhibition itself continues through November 15, 2026.
