Benny Andrews

Benny Andrews was born in Plainview, Georgia, the second of ten children of sharecroppers George and Viola Andrews. His father, largely self-taught, drew and painted constantly and was known locally as 'the Dot Man' for a pointillist style he invented on his own; Andrews later called him his first and most important teacher. Andrews became the first person in his family to finish high school, in 1948, then served in the US Air Force in Korea from 1950 to 1954, sending most of his pay home. He used the G.I. Bill to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where a professor pushed him to combine painting with collage, and graduated with a BFA in 1958 before moving to New York.

Andrews spent the 1960s developing a rough-edged collage technique, gluing cloth, wood and paper into figures that stood outside the era's dominant abstraction, drawing an Autobiographical Series directly from his sharecropping childhood. In 1969 he co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition to protest major museums' exclusion of Black artists from their permanent programs and their token treatment in group shows. He taught at Queens College's SEEK program for nearly 30 years, ran arts programs in state prisons starting in 1971 that became a national model, and directed the National Endowment for the Arts' Visual Arts Program from 1982 to 1984, steering fellowships toward artists museums had ignored. His 1971 painting No More Games made that argument in paint.

Andrews spent his career fighting institutions for space and then, inside them, fighting the assumption that a Black artist from a sharecropping family belonged only in a folk-art or 'outsider' category. He rejected both the era's dominant abstraction and the label of protest painter, insisting his collages were personal before they were political, a position that put him at odds with activist allies who wanted his art to serve the movement more directly. His first marriage, to photographer Mary Ellen Jones Smith, produced three children and ended in separation in 1976 after nineteen years; he remarried, to fellow artist Nene Humphrey, in 1986. He kept teaching in prisons and public schools throughout, unpaid work that never appeared on museum wall text next to the paintings it fed.

Andrews died of cancer on November 10, 2006, in Brooklyn, three days before his 76th birthday. The Black Emergency Cultural Coalition he co-founded is now credited by historians as one of the earliest organized artist protests to force major American museums to change their acquisition and exhibition practices, a template later movements reused. His papers are held by the Smithsonian, and museums that once excluded him — the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago — now hold his work in their permanent collections, the outcome the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition years spent demanding rather than politely requesting.

Benny Andrews's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Autobiographical Series artwork
  Collage-and-paint works drawn from his sharecropping childhood 1963
• No More Games artwork
  Addressed the exclusion of Black artists from major museums 1971
• Black Emergency Cultural Coalition other
  Co-founded to protest museums' treatment of Black artists 1969
• Prison arts education program mission
  Became a national model for arts programs in state prisons 1971
• National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Arts Program other
  Directed the program 1982-1984, steering fellowships to overlooked Black artists 1982

• November 13, 1930 aged 0 Born in Plainview, Georgia, one of ten children of sharecroppers
• 1948 aged ~18 First person in his family to graduate high school
• 1950 aged ~20 Enters the US Air Force; serves in Korea
• 1958 aged ~28 Earns a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on the G.I. Bill and moves to New York
• 1969 aged ~39 Co-founds the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition
• 1971 aged ~41 Paints No More Games and begins teaching art in state prisons
• 1982 aged ~52 Named director of the National Endowment for the Arts' Visual Arts Program
• November 10, 2006 aged 75 Dies of cancer in Brooklyn, three days before his 76th birthday

• Romare Bearden 1911–1988
  Artist who used collage to depict African American life and culture in the 20th century. contemporary
• Faith Ringgold 1930–2024
  Artist and author whose story quilts combine painting, quilting, and narrative to explore Black identity. fellow museum protester
• Toni Morrison 1931–2019
  Nobel laureate whose novels, including Beloved, explored the African American experience with profound lyricism. parallel witness to Black American life
• August Wilson 1945–2005
  Playwright whose ten-play cycle chronicled African American life across the twentieth century. kindred chronicler