Adrienne Walker Hoard (born January 22, 1949) is an African-American woman artist. She is well known for working with color and abstraction in her shaped canvas paintings and being influenced by her travels to different places in the world. She is a retired professor since 2019.
Early life Hoard was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, on January 22, 1949, as the first of three children to parents Charles M. Hoard and Yvonne W. Hoard who both taught at Lincoln University in Missouri. In 1957, she met her first African-American artist role model June Price, an art practice teacher at Washington School, the elementary section of the Lincoln University Laboratory School. In 1962, she won her first two art contests for a drawing of an imaginary man fly-fishing and a drawing of an imaginary lighthouse respectively. In 1963, she won her next two art contests with a drawing of an imaginary lighthouse and a pen & ink drawing of an imaginary student thinking about Latin exams and dreaming about gladiators respectively. She graduated from high school in 1966.
Career
Academic career
Undergraduate and graduate (1966–72) Hoard attended Northwestern University as a freshman in 1966 and stayed there up to 1968. She was studying psychology at first but disliked being in science labs.Pamela Marquis. "Adrienne Walker Hoard: Creating Art and Preserving Culture". 2006. http://homegirlinc.com/homegirlinc/media/ She continued her undergraduate studies and changed her studies to art at Lincoln University (MO) in 1968 where she would be able to be taught by James Dallas Parks (educator, painter, and co-founder of the National Conference of Artists), Leon Hicks (printmaker), Mary Jo Williams (watercolorist & jeweler), and Willie F. Longshore (photographer). She graduated with a BS degree in art education in 1970.
In 1971, she became an Horace H. Rackman School of Graduate Studies Teaching Associate at the University of Michigan. She studied drawing with Ted Ramsey. At the same time, she would be able to study painting with Maurice Vance and Al Weber, and study Afro-American Art with Robert Stull and James Chavers, graduating with a MFA in painting and a minor in museum studies in 1972.
Post-graduate (1972–81) She took upon further study at the Alumni Museum, University of Michigan, studying museum philosophy and practice with Charles H. Sawyer. She also took on etching at the Printmaking Workshop in New York. From 1972 to 1973, she was an assistant professor of art at University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff. From 1973 to 1974, she was an instructor of drawing at the New York Phoenix School of Design. In 1973, she gained employment at the Brooklyn Museum. She was the Researcher-Cataloger for the Jennie Simpson Collection of African Art in 1973, the Head of Adult Education and director for their People-to-People programs in 1974, and stayed there until 1975 when she lost city employment as a result of New York City facing financial crisis. Later in 1975, she was able to become an assistant professor art and Black studies at Ohio State University.
A grant from Ohio State University Graduate School and College of Humanities in 1978 enabled her to travel to South Carolina, Georgia and the Sea Islands to do research on African decorative arts, specifically looking at sea grass baskets. Later that same year, her achievements as an artist and a teacher were written about in the journal Black Art and she had a feature in Ebony Magazine. The year following in 1979, Hoard wrote an article on Brenda Lynn Robinson's art for Mahogany Magazine.
1980 marks her beginning of her travel to a two year visit in Korea. She received a one year Fulbright-Hays grant award which allowed her to go to South Korea for assistance in video tape recording and research on Korean art.College Art of Association. CAA newsletter, vol 5, no .3. September 1980, 6. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=55621fd67d0b95d71d93aeb6c8b59b5d58868f37 During her time in Korea, she was a visiting professor at Hong-Ik University under the Department of Western oil painting and also a visiting professor at Ewha Women's University under the Department of Decorative Arts. In 1981, she was featured in a Korea Times article.
Doctoral program (1981–86) After her stay in Korea, later in 1981, Hoard returned to the United States and began her doctoral program in art education at University of Illinois. She was also a graduate teaching associate during her time there from 1981 to 1982. In 1982, she became an art teacher at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School and taught there until 1985.
She was on the editorial associates team for Visual Arts Research from 1983 to 1986, a journal of visual arts and aesthetic education published twice a year by the University of Illinois Press."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 9, no. 1 (1983). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715528."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 9, no. 2 (1983). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715541."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 10, no. 1 (1984). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715555."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 10, no. 2 (1984). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715568."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 11, no. 1 (1985). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715583."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 11, no. 2 (1985). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715594."Front Matter". Visual Arts Research 12, no. 1 (1986). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715608. She was a visiting associate professor at Northwestern University under the Department of Art Theory and Practice from 1985 to 1986.
Hoard earned her doctorate in art education in 1986. Her dissertation examined how people with and without backgrounds in art analyzed visual structure in Abstract art, which she related to style discrimination and improving art education curriculum so that people could change the way they thought about art.Hoard, Adrienne Walker. Art Trained and Non-Art Trained Subjects' Classifications and Evaluations of Visual Structure in Nonobjective Art. (1986).
1986–88 Later in 1986 after she earned her Ed. D, Hoard left her previous position and became an associate professor of fine art and art education and also a college coordinator at Louisiana State University through 1988.
1988–2013 Hoard wrote an article for Gifted and Talented Digest in 1988. She also became an associate professor of fine art and art education at the University of Missouri-Columbia that same year. In 1989, she traveled to Brazil and presented and published "The Black Aesthetic: An Empirical Feeling" at the Third International Symposium on Art Teaching and Its History there. Her work examined the responses and recognition of African-American viewers to nonobjective art, particularly looking at the responses of African-American viewers to African-American abstract art. She found that participants were able to recognize cultural aspects in abstract artwork that are a part of what she establishes as a Black aesthetic. She also advocated for improving curriculum to be more inclusive of other cultures to increase understanding of nonobjective art in the conclusions of the paper.
In the summer of 1996, she traveled to South Africa independently to do research with Ndebele women artists.Hoard, Adrienne W. "Writing in Africa, about Africa, for Africans as an American." (2005). https://hdl.handle.net/10355/42981
"The Black Aesthetic" would be used and cited as support and an example for shifting attention from art an object to attention on context, product, and inquiry around the art as well later in 1996 in an article by Elizabeth Manley Delacruz. In 1997, Hoard reviewed Voices of Color: Art and Society in the Americas and through her review, shared her belief of building solidarity with others over differences and called for people to reflect on how and why they make meaning out of art. She also pushed for teaching children through a comprehensive art education that teaches about themselves and others and for art educators to move in lockstep with art and artists who have decided to take a more direct political path, such as those from the 1960s. Hoard was able to continue her research in South Africa in 1998 thanks to a grant through the Missouri University International Center.
In 2001, Hoard was able to see her research in South Africa culminate in an article she wrote titled "The Commodification of Art: Ndebele Women in the Stream of Change". She was interested in the similarities between South African art and art made by African diaspora, particularly abstract art. The article included some of her photography as well. She wrote about the art made by the Ndzundza Ndebele people and how their art, such as wall painting, was closely related to personal identity which had to go through changes and transformation as a result of globalization and market consumption. Through an article written in 2005, Hoard revealed that in her decade-long experience in South Africa, her original purpose of looking at diaspora art changed to a focus on the changes to and impacts on the art and lives of Ndebele people, specifically Ndebele women, due to globalization and technological advancements affecting economic survival.Hoard, Adrienne W. "Writing in Africa, about Africa, for Africans as an American". Be My Guest, No. 229, June 2005, p. 14. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/handle/10355/42981 She published further writing and research in the following months.Hoard, Adrienne W. "An Inyanga for the Ndzundza Ndebele". Be My Guest, No. 230, July 2005, p. 16. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/handle/10355/42980Hoard, Adrienne W. "A great leader's spirit never sleeps: a memorial tribute to the late Ndzundza Ndebele King Mayitjha III". Be My Guest, No. 231, August 2005, p. 16. https://mospace.umsystem.edu/handle/10355/42974
Hoard also wrote a review of the exhibition catalogue for Vive Haïti! Contemporary Art of the Haitian Diaspora that same year.
In 2006, she was on a panel for a colloquium honoring Faith Ringgold that was held at Howard University. The panel she spoke on was titled "The Black Arts Movement: Pedagogical Perspectives".
In 2009, her previous work, "The Black Aesthetic", was cited in support of teaching multiculturalism in schools.
On July 26, 2013, it was announced that Hoard would become the director of the Black Studies program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City."University of Missouri-Kansas City Names New Director of Black Studies Program". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (2013).
2013–19 From 2013 to 2019, she was a professor under the Department of Art and Art History as a part of the Black Studies program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. From 2017 to 2019, she was a consultant/lead community advisor at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.
In 2020, Hoard worked with Vesta A.H. Daniel on an article that focused on the importance of telling Black women's stories as counter narratives. The article was in the wake of the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Hoard concentrated on what she called "artivism", the combination of art and activism aligned with her conception of the Black aesthetic. She says, "[a]s artivist, I understand my art creation and my lived experience as a daily political statement. There are many definitions for this concept of marrying the words artist and activist," emphasizing that art and aesthetics can help communicate energy and feelings. She names some artivists she admires, including Barbara Chase-Riboud, Nanette Carter, Faith Ringgold, Michele Wallace, Betye Saar, and her daughters Alison Saar and Lezley Saar, and Malaika Favorite. She also lists concentric circles, linear bands (stripes), diamonds, and diagonals as visual elements of a Black aesthetic.
Artistic practice and career