Kenneth Victor Young

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Kenneth Victor Young
Born(1933-12-12)December 12, 1933
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
DiedMarch 12, 2017(2017-03-12) (aged 83)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting place Arlington National Cemetery
Other namesKen Young, Kenneth Young, Kenneth V. Young
Alma mater University of Louisville
Occupation(s)painter, educator, designer, exhibit designer
Movement Washington Color School
SpouseMorrissa Elizabeth Foley

Kenneth Victor Young (1933–2017), was an American artist, educator, and designer. He is associated with the Washington Color School art movement. [1] [2] He worked at the Smithsonian Institution as an exhibit designer for 35 years. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Kenneth Victor Young was born on December 12, 1933, in Louisville, Kentucky, into an African American family. [1] [4]

He attended the University of Louisville to study design and physics, followed by additional study at Indiana University and University of Hawai'i. [1] [5] While attending University of Louisville, he met fellow student Sam Gilliam, as well as G. Caliman Coxe, and Bob Thompson. [1] [6] In the 1950s, Young served in the United States Navy. [1]

Career

Young briefly worked at DuPont chemical in Louisville, and in moved in 1964 to Washington, D.C., for a new job role as an exhibit designer at the Smithsonian Institution. [1] He was the first Black exhibit designer at Smithsonian Institution. [1] He worked in the evenings as a designer for the United States Information Agency. [1] He was able to travel during this time of his career; visiting Egypt, Italy, and various locations in Africa. [1] While working at the Smithsonian Institution, he was on a project alongside Jacob Kainen and they became friends. [1]

Eventually, he met many of the other Washington Color School painters, possibly through Kainen or in informal associations. [1] There are conflicting dates for when Young started his painting career. [1] By 1960, he was dedicated to painting. [1] His first museum solo exhibit was, Ken Young: Recent Paintings (1974) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Young's paintings were abstract and often featured multiple colored wash strokes. [7] His paintings were large scale in acrylic paint, very bright and colorful. [7] Some of the titles of his paintings are referenced to jazz music. [7]

He taught art at Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, and at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. [3]

Death and legacy

Young died on March 12, 2017, in Washington, D.C. [1] [8] He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Collections

Young's work is included in public museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art, [9] Corcoran Gallery of Art, [10] the Pérez Art Museum Miami, [11] and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. [8] Young's work was once part of the historic Johnson Publishing Company art collection, the parent company of Ebony and Jet magazines. [12]

The Johnson Publishing Company art collection had consisted of 75 African American artists artwork that had once hung in the offices, but due to bankruptcy the artworks went to auction in January 2020. [13] [12] [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lois Mailou Jones</span> American artist and educator (1905–1998)

Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998) was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. She is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanford Robinson Gifford</span> American painter (1823–1880)

Sanford Robinson Gifford was an American landscape painter and a leading member of the second generation of Hudson River School artists. A highly-regarded practitioner of Luminism, his work was noted for its emphasis on light and soft atmospheric effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renwick Gallery</span> United States historic place

The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that was opened in 1859 on Pennsylvania Avenue and originally housed the Corcoran Gallery of Art. When it was built in 1859, it was called "the American Louvre", and is now named for its architect James Renwick Jr.

Gene Davis was an American Color Field painter known especially for his paintings of vertical stripes of color.

The Washington Color School, also known as the Washington, D.C., Color School, was an art movement starting during the 1950s–1970s in Washington, D.C., in the United States, built of abstract expressionist artists. The movement emerged during a time when society, the arts, and people were changing quickly. The founders of this movement are Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, however four more artists were part of the initial art exhibition in 1965.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alma Thomas</span> American painter (1891–1978)

Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Mix Stanley</span> 19th-century American artist

John Mix Stanley was an artist-explorer, an American painter of landscapes, and Native American portraits and tribal life. Born in the Finger Lakes region of New York, he started painting signs and portraits as a young man. In 1842 he traveled to the American West to paint Native American life. In 1846 he exhibited a gallery of 85 of his paintings in Cincinnati and Louisville. During the Mexican–American War, he joined Colonel Stephen Watts Kearney's expedition to California and painted accounts of the campaign, as well as aspects of the Oregon Territory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mose Tolliver</span> American painter

Moses Ernest Tolliver was an American artist. He was known as "Mose T", after the signature on his paintings, signed with a backwards "s."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malvin Gray Johnson</span> American painter

Malvin Gray Johnson was an American painter, born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Kainen</span> American painter and printmaker

Jacob Kainen was an American painter and printmaker. He is also known as an art historian, writing books on John Baptist Jackson and the etchings of Canaletto. In addition, Kainen was a collector of German Expressionist art, and he and his second wife, Ruth, donated a collection of this work to the National Gallery of Art in 1985.

The Barnett-Aden Gallery was an art gallery in Washington D.C., founded by James V. Herring and Alonzo J. Aden, who were associated with Howard University's art department and gallery. The Barnett-Aden Gallery is recognized as the first successful Black-owned private art gallery in the United States, showcasing numerous collectible artists and becoming an important, racially integrated part of the artistic and social worlds of 1940s and 1950s Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennie C. Jones</span> American artist

Jennie C. Jones is an African-American artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been described, by Ken Johnson, as evoking minimalism, and paying tribute to the cross-pollination of different genres of music, especially jazz. As an artist, she connects most of her work between art and sound. Such connections are made with multiple mediums, from paintings to sculptures and paper to audio collages. In 2012, Jones was the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wien Prize, one of the biggest awards given to an individual artist in the United States. The prize honors one African-American artist who has proven their commitment to innovation and creativity, with an award of 50,000 dollars. In December 2015 a 10-year survey of Jones's work, titled Compilation, opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas.

Clark V. Fox is an American modernist painter. He currently resides in New York City.

Val Edwin Lewton was a painter and museum exhibition designer. As an artist, he created Realist acrylic paintings and watercolors of urban and suburban scenes, predominantly in the Washington, D.C., area, where he lived and exhibited.

Ruth Cole Kainen was a major art collector and benefactor. The Kainens collected paintings, drawings, engravings and prints, dating from the 15th century to modern times. While the National Gallery of Art was the major recipient of their generosity, they also donated many works to the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Carlos Alfonzo (1950–1991) was a Cuban-American painter known for his neo-impressionistic style. His work has been collected by Whitney Museum of American Art and Smithsonian Institution.

Luther McKinley Stovall was an American visual artist who resided in Washington, D.C.

Joe Shannon is a stateside Puerto Rican artist, curator, art critic, and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minnie Klavans</span> American artist (1915–1999)

Minnie Klavans was an American artist whose work is held by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the American University Museum, among others.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Capps, Kriston (2017-06-01). "Late Artist Kenneth Young Is Finally Getting His Due". Washington City Paper. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  2. ↑ Rasmussen, Jack (2021). The Long Sixties, Washington Paintings in the Watkins and Corcoran Legacy Collections, 1957 – 1982. American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. Washington, DC. p. 16. ISBN   9781734778847.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. 1 2 Powell, Richard J.; Mecklenburg, Virginia McCord; Slowik, Theresa (2012). African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, The Civil Rights Era, and Beyond. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Skira Rizzoli. ISBN   978-0847838905.
  4. ↑ Tegethoff, Wolf; Savoy, Bénédicte; Beyer, Andreas, eds. (2009). "Young, Kenneth". Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online [Artists of the World Online] (in German). New York City, New York: K. G. Saur.
  5. ↑ Kleber, John E. (2014-07-11). The Encyclopedia of Louisville. University Press of Kentucky. p. 687. ISBN   978-0-8131-4974-5.
  6. ↑ "Kenneth Victor Young: Exploring Space". East City Art. 2021-03-11. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  7. 1 2 3 "Edward Tyler Nahem opens a solo exhibition of the late American painter Kenneth Victor Young". artdaily.com. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  8. 1 2 "Kenneth Victor Young". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  9. ↑ "Kenneth Young". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  10. ↑ "Red Dance". www.nga.gov. 1969. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  11. ↑ "Untitled • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-09-26.
  12. 1 2 Dafoe, Taylor (2020-01-03). "The Historic Artworks That Once Adorned the Offices of 'Jet' and 'Ebony' Are Heading to Auction This Month". Artnet News. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  13. ↑ "Historic Auction of African-American Fine Art from the Johnson Publishing Company". Fine Books & Collections Magazine. OP Media, LLC. February 3, 2020. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
  14. ↑ Dudek, Mitch (2020-02-04). "Johnson Publishing Co. art auction fetches nearly $3 million, doubling expectations". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2021-09-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.