Beauty Is Truth

IT SEEMS TO BE a feature of the art landscape that some incredibly talented women artists have to wait until old age to get the acclaim they deserve, especially in terms of museum shows. Think of Carmen Herrera, Luchita Hurtado, and Etel Adnan (see page 36 in this issue)—and the list could be extended quite a bit. Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978) fits into this category. While she was the first woman graduate of Howard University’s fine-art department, in 1924, and an important member of the Washington Color School, widespread recognition didn’t come till she was almost 80.

Thomas spent 35 years teaching at the junior-high-school level, imparting the love of art to Black children in segregated Washington, for her—during that year she sold more than a dozen major paintings to museums and appeared in two important shows, “Two Centuries of Black American Art” at LACMA and a solo show at Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. Alma Thomas had arrived, albeit only two years before her death.