Duke in Pictures: WSSU students tour art at Duke
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Last week a group of students and faculty from the fine arts department at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) enjoyed a day-long art tour at Duke University. Multimedia artist Fatimah Tuggar (pictured), one of three faculty members from a historically black college and university (HBCU) in residence at Duke’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute this year, organized the trip. Tuggar recently taught art at WSSU where she worked with a number of the visiting students.
The group toured a retrospective of Tuggar’s work, currently on view John Hope Franklin Center, then continued on to see two new installations by Tuggar at the Smith Warehouse and the Duke Immersive Virtual Environment, or DiVE. Later the group toured Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art and the Perkins and Bostock Libraries. At the Special Collections Library, the group ran into Duke art professor Richard Powell. Co-author of the book To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Powell has worked closely with Tuggar during her residency at Duke and revealed that he was a “big fan” of the Winston-Salem State art collection.
Jaeson Pitt, a writer and photographer for the WSSU student newspaper and a member of the tour group, said in an e-mail that he was “inspired to return [to WSSU] to apply the same passion to my work.”
“[Tuggar] was… a great host,” Pitt said. “As we toured the campus, she did not allow students from a small college to feel overwhelmed by [Duke’s] size and resources. She made each of us feel that we could thrive in such a bustling academic setting.”
“Now that we have made this connection,” said artist and WSSU faculty member Leo Morrissey, “I hope we can do this again.”
Photo by Jim Wallace
