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Summary
Geraldine McCullough (1917-2008)
Leaders of Culture, 1963
Oil on canvas
Illinois State Museum, 1971.5.209, property transfer, Illinois State Historical Library
Geraldine McCullough was an artist and educator born in 1922 in Arkansas. She moved to Chicago in 1925 with her family during the Great Migration. McCullough studied as a painter and started making in the early 1960s. The art of Benin, Africa influenced her work, as did the Sepik River cultures of Papua New Guinea. Like many Black artists of her generation, she looked outside the White-dominated art world for inspiration. She described her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago as “all I could take of Western Art.”. McCollough was a professor and Chair of the Art Department of Rosary College, River Forest, Illinois, for 25 years.
McCullough's work was a cultural and political statement about Black empowerment and creativity. McCullough’s painting pictures singer Bessie Smith, author Richard Wright, sculptor Marion Perkins, and musician Big Bill Broonzy as revered cultural leaders. It was exhibited at the 1963 A Century of Negro Progress Exhibition at McCormick Place in Chicago, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Item Duration at Mansion
Temporary