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The Arts Spectrum is a monthly newsletter that focuses
on a wide range of issues and events in the arts, educational policies
of the University, and significant people in the Harvard arts community.
Information about Office for the Arts programs and features about student
performers and exhibitions appear regularly.
For further information email
the Spectrum.
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Elma Lewis
Elma Lewis, a pioneering arts activist, educator, and
leader of Boston’s African American community for over fifty years,
is the recipient of the 2000-01 Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award, which
carries an honorarium of $10,000 and is administered by the Office for
the Arts at Harvard. The award was established by Professor and Mrs.
Ray A. Goldberg and the Max Goldberg Foundation in order to perpetuate
the values and teaching skills represented by the late Professor Vosgerchian,
who taught at Harvard for thirty-one years, serving for four of those
years as Music Department chair. At her retirement, Vosgerchian was
the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music. Dr. Lewis was the guest of
honor at a dinner at Harvard on April 17, which was also the occasion
for a roundtable discussion with the University’s undergraduate
arts leaders.
"We are pleased to recognize Elma Lewis’s
extraordinary contributions to the arts and arts education with this
award," said Myra Mayman, director of the Office for the Arts at
Harvard. "Dr. Lewis’s selfless commitment and her ability
to motivate and galvanize the Boston community in a positive and creative
way embody the spirit and dedication of Luise Vosgerchian."
Lewis was born on September 15, 1921 in Boston,
Massachusetts. Her parents, Clairmont and Edwardine Lewis, emigrated
from the West Indies and were followers of Marcus Garvey, founder of
the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The exposure to the ideals
of Garvey instilled racial pride in Lewis as a child and influenced
her lifelong commitment to promote African culture.
Educated at the Boston Public Schools, Emerson College
(B.L.I., 1943), and Boston University School of Education (M.Ed., 1944),
Lewis taught dance, drama, and speech therapy. She established the Elma
Lewis School of Fine Arts in 1950, the National Center of Afro-American
Artists in 1968, and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American
Artists in 1969, three national and regional cultural institutions for
the performing and visual arts. During a time of political and racial
strife, Lewis sought to bring peace and unity through the school’s
Playhouse in the Park program, a summer theater in Franklin Park, which
began in 1966 and featured performances by Duke Ellington and other
notable artists.
Lewis has received numerous awards and citations
for enriching the cultural life of African American communities locally
and nationally, including a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in
1981 and the Presidential Medal for the Arts in 1983. She has also received
numerous honorary doctoral degrees, including an honorary Art.D. degree
from Harvard University in 1972. She was a board member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston 200, Congressional Black Caucus,
Metropolitan Cultural Alliance, Museum of Fine Arts, NAACP, North American
Zone: 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, Office
of the Mayor of Boston, and WGBH, among other organizations. She has
published a number of articles on the history of the Center and the
School and on the contributions made by African Americans to the arts,
literature, politics, religion, and science.
Previous recipients of the Luise Vosgerchian Teaching
Award include Joan Panetti, professor of music at the Yale University
School of Music; Curt Cacioppo, professor of Music in the Music Department
of Haverford College; Phyllis Curtin, opera singer and dean emerita
of Boston University’s School for the Arts; and Lowell E. Lindgren,
professor of music at M. I. T.
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