Margaret Rose Vendryes facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Margaret Rose Vendryes
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| Born | March 16, 1955 |
| Died | March 29, 2022 (aged 67) |
| Nationality | Jamaican American |
| Education | Princeton University |
| Occupation | Curator, Educator |
Margaret Rose Vendryes (born March 16, 1955 – died March 29, 2022) was a talented visual artist, a curator (someone who organizes art shows), and an art historian (someone who studies art history). She lived and worked in New York.
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Early Life and Learning
Margaret Rose Vendryes was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on March 16, 1955. She first studied how to design costumes. Later, she switched to fine art. She earned her first degree from Amherst College in 1984.
She continued her studies in art history. In 1992, she earned her master's degree from Tulane University. Then, in 1997, she earned her PhD from Princeton University. At Princeton, she focused on African American art history. She was the first Black woman to earn a PhD in art history from Princeton.
Her Career in Art
Margaret Vendryes worked at York College in New York starting in 2000. She was the head of the Department of Performing and Fine Arts. She also directed the Fine Arts Gallery there. She was going to become a Dean at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston in June 2022.
From 2000 to 2001, she taught at Princeton University. She also worked as a professor at City University of New York from 2002 to 2007. She taught about modern American and contemporary art.
Vendryes believed it was important to look at art in many ways. She warned against only focusing on an artist's race when interpreting their work. She felt this could limit how people understood the art. It might also make people miss the art's bigger impact on the art world.
In 2009, she taught about African Art at Boston University.
Curating Exhibitions
In 2010, Margaret Vendryes organized an art show at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum Of Art. It was called Richmond Barthé: The Seeker. She wrote about Barthe's sculptures in her 2008 book. That same year, she curated another show called Beyond the Blues at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
From 2011 to 2013, she taught about African and African American Art at Wellesley College.
In 2013, Vendryes returned to York College. She continued her work as a lecturer and director of the Fine Arts Gallery.
In 2015, she gave a special talk for an exhibition called The Visual Blues. This show featured art from the Harlem Renaissance at the Jepson Center for the Arts.
Her Own Artwork
In 2005, Margaret Vendryes started a special art series called The African Diva Project. She used oil paint and cold wax on canvas. More recently, she added real African masks to her art.
This series began with a painting of singer Donna Summer. It was inspired by Donna Summer's Four Seasons of Love album cover. In her art, Vendryes combined pictures of Western pop culture stars with traditional African masks. These masks are usually worn only by men. Through her art, she explored ideas about power, race, gender, and beauty. The project included many famous Black American women, like Aretha Franklin, Grace Jones, and Whitney Houston.
Her artwork was also part of an exhibition called i found god in myself: the 40 anniversary of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls.... This show traveled to the African American Museum in Philadelphia in 2016. It also went to the City Without Walls (cWOW) gallery in Newark, New Jersey, in 2017. Other artists in this show included Renée Cox, Carrie Mae Weems, and Deborah Willis.
Death and What She Left Behind
Margaret Vendryes was a long-time board member of the Leslie Lohman Museum. She passed away on March 29, 2022, due to respiratory failure. Her death was announced by the Southeast Queens Artists' Alliance.
The Childs Gallery in Boston, where she had a long history, held a special exhibit to honor her. This memorial show ran from November 2022 to January 2023.
