By Eric Curl
March 1, 2021- The Savannah College of Art and Design recently provided some information about the university’s collection of art work by the late Savannah artist, educator and civil rights activist Virginia Jackson Kiah.
While many of the paintings are on display inside SCAD facilities, some of the more fragile works of art are being housed in suitable climate-controlled conditions so they can be protected from further deterioration, according to a statement attributed to Kari Herrin, SCAD’s VP of Brand Experience and Head of Exhibitions.
Kiah donated the paintings to the university in 1987 after joining the college’s Board of Trustees that year and receiving an honorary doctor of humanities degree from SCAD in 1986, Herrin said.
“SCAD students and community have access to all of Dr. Kiah’s rich history and her works are available to view and learn from,” she said.
When asked where the public may be able to see the art, Executive Director of Communications Michelle Gavin said that the university is in the process of moving some pieces to different buildings and she did not have a list of locations of the paintings that are on display.
Kiah specialized in painting portraits, often of well known civil rights, political and religious leaders. Her art education includes degrees from such institutions as the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, University of Pennsylvania and Art Students League of New York.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, churches and government buildings across the country. She was also a founding member of the National Conference of Artists, established in 1959 in Atlanta to promote Black artists.
SCAD’s collection of Kiah’s paintings includes 1940s-’50s-era portraits of civil rights activists, local businessmen, family members and residents, according to the images and information provided by the university.
At least one of the paintings was displayed at Kiah’s Cuyler-Brownville house, which she had converted into a community museum in the late 1950s. In this undated video, Kiah gives a tour of the house and describes the portrait, which she says depicts the white owner of a plumbing business, Bernie Warshaw, who welcomed everyone at a time that many businesses discriminated against Blacks.
“This man was so democratic,” she said. “He treated everybody the same and I felt that his portrait should be painted.”
Today, Kiah’s vacant 106-year-old house is one of 10 properties on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2021 list of ‘Places in Peril’, as a result of an ongoing 21-year-old estate case in Chatham County Probate Court. Historic Savannah Foundation officials say they entered a contract in July last year to purchase and preserve the long-vacant and deteriorating property, but the purchase is being held up by the legal dispute.
A little more than a mile north of her house at 505 W. 36th St., a 19th-century Georgia Railway building named in Kiah’s honor stands fully restored at 227 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Herrin said Kiah Hall was named for the artist in 1993 and today the building houses the administrative offices of the SCAD Museum of Art.
SCAD’s Virginia Jackson Kiah art collection
c. 1942
Oil on canvas, 26 x 20 ½
The artist’s husband Calvin Lycurgus Kiah with a doctorate from Columbia University was an academic dean at Savannah State College and a vice president of academic affairs at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Image courtesy of SCAD.
1941
Oil on canvas, 37 ½ x 27 ½
Unveiled at the Department of Labor building in Washington, D.C., on October 28, 1941.
This portrait depicts the famed educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), who was a member of Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet and founder of the Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. The occasion of the portrait’s unveiling was the first National Negro Women’s Council Conference. The life portrait was the subject of correspondence between the artist and the educator in 1941. Image courtesy of SCAD.
1943
Oil on canvas, 15 ¾ x 12 ¾
Virginia Kiah rented a chicken farm from the sitter during World War II.
Image courtesy of SCAD.
1959
Oil on canvas, 14 x 12
Ponder was a member of the Board of Directors of Carver State Bank in Savannah.
Image courtesy of SCAD.
c. 1940s-50
Oil on canvas, 28 x 24
The sitters (depicted left to right) were three of the four sons of Civil Rights activist attorneys Clarence M. and Juanita Jackson Mitchell of Baltimore, Maryland.
Image courtesy of SCAD.
c. 1950s
Oil on canvas, 16/12 x 12 ½
One of the artist’s Savannah portraits, the subject was a local storeowner.
Image courtesy of SCAD.
Image courtesy of SCAD.
Image courtesy of SCAD.
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