About Levi Watkins Learning Center

Artist: Benny Andrews (African American, 1930-2006)

Benny Andrews was born into a Georgia sharecropper family. He is largely known as a collage artist which he rendered in series of works. He was also a painter, a printmaker, a book illustrator, a writer and critic, a lecturer and a professor at Queens College of New York. His use of found objects and fabrics were selected to connote the status and occupation of the figure or figures depicted. His 'social realism' approach to rendering the daily life of African American's, particularly that of church-going Christians, lends a dignity of ordinary life.

Among various social issues he actively pursued, in the 1960s/70s he was an activist for increasing the visibility of African American artists; he lead protests at museums not exhibiting African American art. Andrews received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1958). From 1982-84 he was director of the Visual Art Program for the National Endowment for the Arts. Widely exhibited in private galleries, his work can be found in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), High Museum of Art (GA), and the Smithsonian Institution (D.C.)