Harlem Renaissance Man

African American artist Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka in 1899 and taught at Lincoln High School in Kansas City at one time. He later became part of the "the early 20th-century explosion of black arts and letters known as the Harlem Renaissance." The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas opened an exhibit on September 8, 2007, named "Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist." This exhibit "features more than 90 paintings, book illustrations and murals and will be accompanied by a major national conference on Sept. 28-29." According to the article, Douglas founded the art department at Lincoln High School in the early 1920s. From there he moved to Harlem, New York. Douglas died in 1979.