Benny Andrews
Benny Andrews was an artist, educator and activist. He was born in Plainview, GA in 1930. Andrews earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958. Soon after, he moved to New York City, where he would live, work and paint for nearly five decades.
Andrews co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), which agitated for greater representation of African American artists and curators in New York’s major art museums in the late 1960s and 70s. He also led the BECC in founding a groundbreaking arts education program in prisons and detention centers. Andrews taught art at Queens College for nearly three decades, beginning in the late 1960s. From 1982 through 1984, he served as the Director of the Visual Arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts.
As a student in Chicago, Andrews developed a practice of incorporating collaged fabric and other material into his figurative oil paintings, a technique he would continue throughout his career. In addition to working in oil and mixed-media collage, he made sculptures, prints and drawings. He also illustrated several books written by his brother, the author Raymond Andrews, as well as many children’s books, including a biography …
Benny Andrews was an artist, educator and activist. He was born in Plainview, GA in 1930. Andrews earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958. Soon after, he moved to New York City, where he would live, work and paint for nearly five decades.
Andrews co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), which agitated for greater representation of African American artists and curators in New York’s major art museums in the late 1960s and 70s. He also led the BECC in founding a groundbreaking arts education program in prisons and detention centers. Andrews taught art at Queens College for nearly three decades, beginning in the late 1960s. From 1982 through 1984, he served as the Director of the Visual Arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts.
As a student in Chicago, Andrews developed a practice of incorporating collaged fabric and other material into his figurative oil paintings, a technique he would continue throughout his career. In addition to working in oil and mixed-media collage, he made sculptures, prints and drawings. He also illustrated several books written by his brother, the author Raymond Andrews, as well as many children’s books, including a biography of civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis. He continued his prolific output of artwork, which ranged from explorations of history and social justice to intimate depictions of friends and family, until his death in 2006. In the foreword to the 2013 exhibition catalog Benny Andrews: There Must Be a Heaven, Congressman Lewis remembered Andrews:
"For Benny there was no line where his activism ended, and his art began. To him, using his brush and his pen to capture the essence and spirit of his time was as much an act of protest as sitting-in or sitting-down was for me. I can see him now: thinking, speaking, articulating what needs to be done and in the next few moments trying to make real what he had been contemplating. He was honest to a fault, and I think it was his determination to speak the plain truth that shaped his demand for justice and social integrity. He never aligned with any political group, but would offer the full weight of his support to anyone he thought was standing for truth."
Courtesy of the Benny Andrews Estate
Albany Museum of Art, Albany, GA
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AK
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas, Pine Bluff, AK
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens GA
Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC
Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY
Guilford College Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC
The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts & Culture, Charlotte, NC
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, NY
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Housantic Museum of Art, Housantic Community College, Bridgeport, CT
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN
James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
Maier Museum of Art, Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL
Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA
The Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA
Museum Overholland, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan
Ohio University Art Gallery, Columbus, OH
The Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs, CA
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, CT
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
The Tubman Museum, Macon, GA
Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS
William Benton Museum of Art
Zora Neal Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts, Orlando, FL
