On November 1st, we celebrated the life and times of Margaret Taylor-Burroughs (November 1, 1915 – November 21, 2010), also known as Margaret Taylor Goss, Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs or Margaret T G Burroughs; an African-American artist and writer and a co-founder of the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago, IL. She also helped to establish the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, whose opening on May 1, 1941 was dedicated by the First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt. There at the age of 23 Burroughs served as the youngest member of its board of directors. She was a prolific writer, with her efforts directed toward the exploration of the Black experience and to children, especially to their appreciation of their cultural identity and to their introduction and growing awareness of art. She is also credited with the founding of Chicagos Lake Meadows Art Fair in the early 1950s. At its inception there were very limited venues and galleries for African American Artists to exhibit and sell their artwork, so she launched the Fair, which rapidly grew in popularity and became one of the most anticipated exhibitions for artists, collectors and others throughout the greater Chicago area. After a brief hiatus beginning in the early 1980s, it was resurrected by Helen Y. West in 2005 - and another of Margaret Burroughs legacies lives on. Burroughs was born Victoria Margaret Taylor in St. Rose, Louisiana, and by the time she was five years old the family had moved to Chicago. There she attended Englewood High School along with Gwendolyn Brooks, who in 1985-1986 served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (now United States Poet Laureate). As classmates, the two joined the NAACP Youth Council. She earned teachers certificates from Chicago Teachers College in 1937. She helped found the South Side Community Arts Center in 1939 to serve as a social center, gallery, and studio to showcase African American artists. In 1946, Taylor-Burroughs earned a Bachelors of Art in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she also earned her Masters of Art in art education in 1948. Taylor-Burroughs married the artist Bernard Goss (1913–1966) in 1939, and they divorced in 1947. In 1949 she married Charles Gordon Burroughs, and they had been married for forty-five years at the time he died in 1994. Taylor-Burroughs taught at DuSable High School from 1946 to 1969, and from 1969 to 1979 was a professor of humanities at Kennedy-King College, a community college in Chicago. She also taught African-American Art and Culture at Elmhurst College in 1968. She was named Chicago Park District Commissioner by Harold Washington in 1985, a position she held until 2010. She died on November 21, 2010. Margaret and her husband Charles co-founded what is now called the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago in 1961. The institution was originally known as the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art and made its debut in the living room of their house at 3806 S. Michigan Avenue in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicagos south side, and Taylor-Burroughs served as its executive director for the first ten years of its existence. She was proud of the institutions grass-roots beginnings: we’re the only one that grew out of the indigenous Black community. We weren’t started by anybody downtown; we were started by ordinary folks. Burroughs served as Executive Director until 1984 and was then named Director Emeritus, remaining active in the museums operations and fundraising efforts. The museum moved to its current location at 740 E. 56th Place in Washington Park in 1973, and today is the oldest museum of black culture in the United States. Both the current museum building, and the Burroughs S. Michigan Avenue home are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Margaret Burroughs has created many of her own works of art as well. In one of Burroughs linocuts, Birthday Party, both black and white children are seen celebrating. The black and white children are not isolated from each other; instead they are intermixed and mingling around the table together waiting for birthday cake. An article published by The Art Institute of Chicago described Burroughs Birthday Party and said, Through her career, as both a visual artist and a writer, she has often chosen themes concerning family, community, and history. Art is communication, she has said. I wish my art to speak not only for my people - but for all humanity. This aim is achieved in Birthday Party, in which both black and white children dance, while mothers cut cake in a quintessential image of neighbors and family enjoying a special day together. Burroughs was impacted by Harriet Tubman, Gerard L. Lew, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois. In Eugene Feldman’s “The Birth and Building of the DuSable Museum” he writes about the influence Du Bois had on Burroughs’ life. Feldman believes that Burroughs greatly admired Du Bois and writes that she campaigned to bring him to Chicago to lecture to audiences. Feldman wrote, “If we read about ‘cannabalistic and primitive Africa,’…It is a deliberate effort to put down a whole people and Dr. Du Bois fought this… Dr. Burroughs saw Dr. Du Bois and what he stood for and how he suffered himself to attain exposure of his views. She identified entirely with this important effort. Therefore, Burroughs clearly believed in Dr. Du Bois and the power of his message. In many of Burroughs pieces, she depicts people with half black and half white faces. In The Faces of My People Burroughs carved five people staring at the viewer. One of the women is all black, three of the people are half black and half white and one is mostly white. While Burroughs is attempting to blend together the black and white communities, she also shows the barriers that stop the communities from uniting. None of the people in “The Faces of My People” are looking at each other, and this implies a sense of disconnect among them. On another level, The Faces of My People deals with diversity. An article from The Collector Magazine website describes Burroughs attempts to unify in the picture. The article says, Burroughs sees her art as a catalyst for bringing people together. This tableau of diverse individuals illustrates her commitment to mutual respect and understanding. The holdings of the Koehnline Museum of Art at Oakton Community College include a collection of fifteen of Burroughs linocut prints from the 1990s. In 1975, Taylor-Burroughs received the Presidents Humanitarian Award. Taylor-Burroughs won the Paul Robeson Award in 1989, and in 2010 was granted The Legends and Legacy Award, a program of the Leadership Advisory Committee of the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Riding Together by Margaret Burroughs
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:05:08 +0000
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